Turnstone (19 page)

‘You had a choice,’ he said slowly. ‘You either followed the herd and rock-hopped down the coast, or you put a good deep tack way down into mid-Channel. The coast can be tricky. There are loads of tidal gates. Miss one of them and you’re going backwards. It’s all down to the weather in the end, the weather and the wind.’

‘So what did you do?’

Faraday produced the map he’d taken from Hartson’s printer and now he spread it on the table. Oomes glanced at it without comment.

‘We went south,’ he said. ‘Looking for the wind.’

‘And the rest of them?’

‘They mainly stayed inshore.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that was their punt. The Fastnet’s a gamble. Saturday the wind was shit. It was coming at us from the south-west but there wasn’t much to it. It could have done any fucking thing. The guys who stayed inshore were looking for a freebie on the tide. Like I say, we went south.’

‘Who’s idea was that?’

‘Henry’s. He’d been dialling up the weather people all afternoon. There’s an outfit in Florida gives you read-outs from weather buoys and whatnot right down the Channel. That’s all Henry needed. Give him the raw data and he could find wind in a vacuum flask. Guy was a genius.’

Faraday paused, struck by this piece of hi-tech wizardry.

‘What do you mean, dialling?’

‘Henry had a laptop and a mobile. That close to land, you can access the Internet through a modem. It’s chicken-shit. Any kid could do it. Couple of seconds for the connection, and Henry could give you the weather anywhere in the world.’

‘Henry used the laptop a lot?’

‘All the time. Plus he had a couple of PCs, one for home, one for the business. I used to give him a deal on the hardware and bundled all the software he could handle. He loved it, loved it. Bloke was a natural around computers. Some of the nav programmes he actually offered to improve.’

Faraday nodded.

‘So Saturday night, at Henry’s suggestion, you went south …’

‘Yeah, and you know something? He was right. Midnight Saturday the wind backed southerly, just the way he’d said it would. Little anticyclone, slipping eastwards, way out in the Channel. It was so small every other fucker missed it. The inshore boys were gutted. We’d stuffed them.’

‘You were out there on your own?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘No other boats around?’

‘Obviously not, that was the whole point.’

Faraday was staring at the map, trying to imagine the fleet thinning as they pushed west. Most of the boats had stayed inshore, tacking against the wind from headland to headland.
Marenka
, on the other hand, was way out in the Channel, cloaked by darkness.

From his briefcase, Faraday fetched out the plan of a Sigma 33 that Cathy had acquired from a local chandlery. He laid the plan beside the map, taking his time.

‘You had a watch system?’ he asked at last.

‘Everyone has a watch system. Four hours on, four hours off.’

‘The two lads, Sam and David, were they on the same watch?’

‘May have been.’

‘David’s father says they were.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes. When they were off-watch, they’d get their heads down, wouldn’t they?’

‘If they were lucky, yeah.’

‘Go to sleep even, down below.’

‘Might do.’

‘Where, down below?’

‘In the main cabin. It’s pretty much of a slum but that’s where you kip.’

Faraday reached for the plan. Thick in the waist,
Marenka
tapered gracefully towards the bow. Forward of the tiny loo, beyond a bulkhead, lay the forecabin. Faraday’s finger hovered over the bow.

‘There’s a hatch above the forecabin, isn’t there?’

‘Yeah. It’s small, though.’

‘But big enough for a sail bag?’

‘Sure.’

‘So if you wanted to get something out of the forecabin without using the main cabin … you could do it, couldn’t you?’

Faraday waited for an answer. Oomes was staring at him.

‘Like what?’ he said.

Faraday ignored the question. He was still studying the plan of the Sigma when Oomes leaned forward, stabbing a thick forefinger at the very middle of the boat.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘this is a fucking garden shed you’re talking about. Five paces end to end down below. It’s tiny. I’ve measured it. This forecabin you’re on about isn’t at the end of some fucking corridor. It’s just the other side of the bog. And the bog is smaller than a wardrobe. We’re talking intimate here. You wanna keep something nice and private, forget it.’

‘Why would you want to do that?’

‘I wouldn’t. Because I couldn’t. And that’s the whole point. OK?’

Faraday abandoned the boat plan and returned to the map.

‘I need to know exactly where you went down.’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘You can’t?’

‘No way. We were south of Land’s End around midnight, then we headed north-west. The weather was shit already. The wind backed to the south-east and we were flying. By one in the morning it was off the clock. I tell you, we were down to a storm jib and thinking of binning that. Huge fucking seas. Stuff coming at us from everywhere. Then the wind stops. Then it starts again. Bang on the nose, right out of the north-west. We didn’t know where we fucking were. It was all we could do to keep the boat in one piece.’

‘Yacht,’ Cathy said quietly.

‘Yacht, then.’ Oomes hadn’t taken his eyes off Faraday. ‘They clocked those winds at force eleven. Force
eleven
. That’s one down from a hurricane. It was unbelievable. You ask me where we came to grief I have to tell you I haven’t a clue. The guys who picked us up will have a position but that was hours later.’

Faraday permitted himself a tiny frown. From Land’s End to the Fastnet Rock was nearly a hundred and eighty miles.

‘So she could be anywhere …?’ he said.

‘
Marenka
?’ For the first time, Oomes smiled. ‘I’m afraid so, my friend.’

There was a long silence. Then Oomes glanced pointedly at his watch and got to his feet. He had an important client to meet in less than an hour’s time. If he didn’t get his figures together, the guy would have flown halfway across the world for nothing. Faraday nodded, then rolled the yacht plan inside the map and secured them both with an elastic band.

Beside the door was a photo of Charlie Oomes and Derek Bissett at some function or other. They were sitting at a table, sharing a bottle of champagne, their glasses raised to the camera.

Faraday paused, then glanced round. Oomes was sitting at his desk, his back turned, staring at the computer screen. Faraday mentioned the rumour he’d heard about Bissett when he was still with the Thames Valley force. Charlie had offered him bungs to put police contracts his way. Not just bungs but the guarantee of a job once Bissett’s days in uniform were over. Did Charlie have a view on that?

Oomes didn’t move. Faraday stood patiently by the door, awaiting a reaction. Finally, Oomes’s left hand steadied on the computer keyboard. He didn’t bother to turn round.

‘Can you prove any of that drivel?’ he said.

‘Not yet.’

‘Then don’t waste my fucking time.’

They were nearly back on the M25 before Cathy began to voice her reservations. She’d listened to Faraday over the last couple of days. She’d listened to him building theory on theory, pushing his assumptions just as far as they would go. Some of the links he’d made were blind guesswork. Others were really shrewd. But was he really suggesting that Charlie Oomes and the rest of his crew had somehow volunteered themselves as accessories to murder?

Faraday nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘But Bissett’s a copper.’

‘Was. Until Oomes bought him.’

‘And Hartson?’

‘Oomes has probably bought him, too. Have the FIU come back yet?’

‘No.’ Cathy stared out at the flaring sunset. ‘So what was in it for Oomes?’

‘Winning. He wanted to win. That’s all that mattered. That’s all that’s ever mattered. Without a navigator, he’d have been stuffed. He’s practically admitted it himself.’ He paused to pass a convoy of Eddie Stobart trucks. ‘And what’s the risk? He dumps the guy at sea on night one. According to Kellard’s parents, the two kids have buddied up. They’re off watch. They’re probably asleep. They don’t even know there’s a body aboard. The boat’s way out in the Channel. There’s no one else around. Looks foolproof to me.’

‘You’re serious? He sets sail with a corpse? You really think he’d take a gamble like that?’

‘I know he would. He’s been gambling all his life. That’s what the firm’s about. He’s a guy who loves cheating the odds. Show him a challenge and he can’t resist it. He’ll square every circle. Just as long as he wins.’ He glanced across at her. ‘You don’t see it, do you?’

Nineteen

Back in Portsmouth, Cathy found the details of the FIU inquiry waiting on her computer. The bulk of the major transfers into Ian Hartson’s bank account had come from Charlie Oomes. The most recent, a sum of fifteen thousand pounds, had been deposited only yesterday when Hartson had also withdrawn eight thousand in cash from his local Chiswick branch. Cathy pointed out the time at which the counter transaction had been logged. Twelve forty-six. They’d missed him by barely an hour.

‘Where do you think he went?’

Faraday was asking himself the same question. From memory, the Bilbao ferry sailed on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Tomorrow was Saturday, and he’d certainly get someone down to the ferryport to watch embarking passengers, but it seemed unlikely that Hartson would sail from here. With eight thousand pounds in your pocket there were a million ways of getting to Spain. Why risk Portsmouth?

Next door, in his own office, was a note for Faraday from Jerry Proctor, the SOCO. A preliminary trawl through Charlie Oomes’s Port Solent house had produced nothing of any interest – certainly no signs of a struggle. He was quite prepared to give the premises a thorough turning-over but there were cost implications and he would need an overtime code before proceeding. Faraday thought about it for a moment or two and then scribbled a note in reply. He hadn’t got the code Proctor needed and in any case he sensed that Neville Bevan had been right all along. Anyone prepared to surrender their house keys had little to fear from the forensic boys.

Faraday looked up to find Cathy at the door. She was about to go home but he called her back.

‘We need to check out the radio traffic,’ he said. ‘Messages from Oomes’s boat during the race. I don’t know how it works but you need to cover all the bases. VHF. Mobiles. Whatever. Then I need a look round a Sigma 33.’ He smiled. ‘I was wondering whether you could organise that, too?’

‘Like how?’

‘Like talking to Pete. He’s bound to know someone.’

Cathy stared at him for a long moment, then rummaged in her bag for an address book. Taking the pen from his hand, she checked for a number and scribbled it on a pad by Faraday’s elbow.

‘What’s that?’ he said blankly.

‘That’s Pete’s mum. I gather he’s in most nights. Do you mind phoning yourself?’

Winter knew the geography of Port Solent by heart. From the terrace of a pub called the Mermaid, you could look across the water into the middle of the horseshoe formed by the apartment block. The balconies were all on the inside of the horseshoe and Juanita’s place was up on the fifth floor.

The Friday night crowd were already three deep at the bar and after elbowing his way to a pint of Kronenburg, Winter settled himself on the terrace, abandoning his copy of the
News
for an occasional check on Juanita’s flat. He had an intense respect for big Dave Pope. If anything, Elaine’s brother was even more volatile, even more dangerous, than Marty. Quite why last night’s events in the car park hadn’t gone further was still beyond him.

It took another pint and a half before Winter had his answer. First on to the balcony was Juanita. Tonight she was wearing a flame-coloured halter and she spent several minutes studying the view before glancing up at the darkening sky and disappearing inside. Fifteen minutes later, Winter was engrossed in a preview of Pompey’s prospects for the coming season when his mobile began to chirp.

He answered it at once, still deep in the paper.

‘I don’t know why you read that crap,’ said a voice.

Quicker than he should have done, Winter looked up at the apartment block. Dave Pope was standing on Juanita’s balcony, one hand raised in a derisive wave.

At home by mid-evening, Faraday found a typed A4 envelope with a London postmark amongst his mail. Ripping it open, he emptied the contents on to the kitchen table. With the big colour photograph was a letter of congratulations. Mr J. Faraday had won second prize in a competition organised by a leading wildlife magazine. Enclosed was a cheque for three hundred pounds.

Faraday picked up the photograph. It showed a gannet that J-J had snapped on one of their birding expeditions to North Yorkshire. They’d joined a party of birders on a boat trip out of Bridlington. They’d spent most of the day at sea and towards the end of the afternoon they’d found themselves amongst a group of diving gannets in pursuit of a shoal of fish. It was only J-J’s second outing with the 300mm lens that Faraday had bought him for Christmas, but as the birds began to feed he’d got lucky with the focus, catching a plunging gannet a split second before it hit the water.

Faraday looked at the photograph now, as amazed as ever at its power and impact. The gannet’s long wings arrowed back from its body. Its neck was outstretched, its eyes were open, and J-J had captured perfectly the soft blush of apricot on its head. The wave at the foot of the frame was thrusting upwards, laced with spume, and half-closing his eyes Faraday was afloat again, gazing out as bird after bird plunged down, pocking the grey sea with little explosions of white. Janna would have been proud of a shot like this, and prouder still of the cheque. Three hundred pounds could have got J-J safely to France. Three hundred pounds would have kept
The Birds of the Western Palearctic
intact.

Faraday put the photograph and the cheque to one side, and sank into a chair. Making any kind of peace with J-J’s absence was less than easy. Most of the time he was able to take Cathy’s advice and push the boy to the very back of his mind. Other times he was just angry – angry with his son and angry with himself. But tonight, remembering the gannets, it was altogether more simple. He missed J-J. He missed his company, and his laughter, and his flailing arms. Without him, the house felt suddenly chill and empty, a tomb-like reminder that he was well and truly on his own.

Outside, it had begun to rain. On Friday nights, the traffic was streaming into the city but Faraday drove in a trance, oblivious to the blur of headlights around him. Ruth Potterne lived in Southsea. He had the address. He even knew the road, one of those sinuous tree-lined Thomas Owen streets that were the city’s sole concession to gentility and good taste. When he found the house, a light in a first-floor window offered a glimpse of bookshelves and a corner of plaster coving picked out in buttermilk and soft reds. Janna’s colours he thought, getting slowly out of the car.

Ruth Potterne answered his second knock. Barefoot, she was wearing a pair of jeans and a baggy old sweatshirt with ‘Navy Gun Crew’ across the front. She had a glass of wine in her hand.

It took her several seconds to recognise him. The rain had flattened his hair against his skull and drips from the lime tree were patterning his shirt. He began to apologise for calling so late, surprised at how tongue-tied he’d suddenly become, but when she stepped aside and invited him in, he felt unaccountably glad. The house smelled of joss sticks. The colours of the oriental rugs, and wall hangings, spoke yet again of a world he hadn’t seen for twenty years. Janna’s taste. Janna’s daring. Janna’s home.

Faraday heard himself talking about Stewart Maloney. Inquiries had reached the point where he had to be sure about events in his private life.

‘Sure how, exactly?’

‘Sure that you two weren’t’ – Faraday risked a smile – ‘together.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘It’s not a question of belief, Mrs Potterne. It’s a question of evidence.’

Something in that sentence made her flinch. Faraday could see it in her eyes. Was it the mention of belief? Was it the need for evidence?

‘Call me Ruth.’ She returned his smile. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’

Upstairs, in the living room, he accepted a glass of Chilean red. Her photos were everywhere, hung in random patterns against the deep, plum-coloured wallpaper. The contrast with the bleak white spaces of Maloney’s seafront apartment couldn’t have been more obvious.

‘So how do you propose to acquire this evidence?’

Faraday blinked at the question. He hadn’t thought this conversation through. For once in his life, he was completely lost.

‘We’ll need some DNA …’ he began.

‘Some what?’

‘DNA. A mouthswab will do. Or hair, if it’s easier.’

‘But I thought Stewart had disappeared?’

‘He has. It’s your DNA we’re talking about.’

Faraday tried to pull himself together, explaining how he’d look for a match on items from Maloney’s flat. Something like a pillowcase from his bed. It was nothing more than a formality, a closing-down of a certain line of inquiry.

Ruth had settled into a chair beside the open fireplace.

‘You want to do it now? Here?’

‘We can do it whenever it’s convenient. The kit’s back at the station. I’ll arrange for a policewoman to give you a ring.’

‘Should I have a lawyer with me?’

‘If you want to, of course you can. It’s your choice.’

‘Fine.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Not at all. Why on earth should I?’

Faraday tried to think of an answer but couldn’t. Ruth took a sip of her wine, then put it carefully to one side.

‘So why are you really here?’ she asked him.

Startled, he returned her gaze for a moment or two and then told her that he didn’t know. It was a moment of absolute candour, and he felt all the more foolish because he couldn’t account for the fact that he’d said it, for the fact that he’d even knocked on the door. Was it something to do with J-J? With memories of Janna? With working eighteen-hour days to no great effect? It was true. It was shameful. He just didn’t know.

‘My son left home a couple of days ago …’ he began.

She nodded and gestured for him to carry on, and moments later he found himself telling her about J-J, about his new French girlfriend, and about the boy’s absolute conviction that his future lay with a virtual stranger in a foreign land. She was clever, this woman Valerie, much cleverer than J-J. She’d twist him this way and that, use him, take advantage of his innocence.

‘I know she will,’ Faraday said. ‘I’ve met her. I’ve seen them together.’ Ruth looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head.

‘You’re talking about loss, not innocence.’

‘You’re right.’

‘Your loss.’

‘Right again.’

‘And it hurts. Of course it hurts. I lost my own son five days ago. It hurts a great deal.’

Faraday closed his eyes. He’d met this woman only yesterday. He’d met her in the gallery. He’d sympathised about the loss of her husband. Yet he hadn’t said a word about her son. Sam had drowned at sea. And clever old Faraday had said bugger all.

‘So what does that make me?’ he said aloud. ‘Apart from stupid?’

Ruth waved his apology away.

‘It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing you can say anyway. Here’ – she passed him the bottle – ‘help yourself.’

Faraday hesitated for only a second. He liked the smell of this place, its warmth, the feeling that someone else in the world might understand him. He wasn’t here to cross-question her, to push his working day still deeper into the evening, but as the wine slipped down he realised that it was happening anyway. He wanted to find out about Ruth Potterne. He wanted to know about her marriage, and her efforts to broker a peace between her son and her new husband. He wanted to understand where she’d come from and what it was that had first attracted her to Henry Potterne. Not because he was a detective, hunting for bits of the jigsaw, but because he felt old, and abandoned, and suddenly needful. Friendship would be good. He’d settle for that.

She was talking about the summer she’d first met Henry. She’d been living on a semi-derelict houseboat on the Isle of Wight with her ten-year-old son, trying to make a living for herself as a photographer. She did portrait work for friends, and friends of friends, and she even stooped to doing the odd wedding, but her real love was for art photography and to make a success of that she had to find an outlet.

‘Henry had a gallery in Southsea,’ she said, ‘a tiny place in the back streets, totally chaotic. I’d heard of it from a painter friend so I just took an armful of stuff over.’

She’d been thirty-three years old. She remembered the date because it happened to be her birthday. She’d let the fact slip and Henry had taken her to lunch in a pub in Old Portsmouth. He’d liked her work a great deal. The word he’d used was ‘compelling’.

‘He was right.’

Faraday was looking at one of the shots on the wall. Unusually for Ruth, it was in colour. A low sun spilled shadows across an eternity of gleaming sand. In the far distance, a tiny row of beach huts.

Ruth laughed.

‘That was Bembridge Harbour, just down from the houseboat. Imagine waking up to that every morning. It was a photographer’s dream.’

‘You’ve got more?’

‘Hundreds. You’ll regret this.’

She left the room and returned with a big fabric-bound album. Faraday began to leaf through them, pausing from time to time to study a particular shot. The younger Ruth had a thing about skies and the reflection of light in water. Time after time, Faraday found himself looking at a dizzying tumble of cloud, often framed by mud flats or sand, occasionally anchored by a thin strip of horizon. The album spoke of sunshine and space. Not one photograph contained a human being.

‘Where’s Sam, then?’

‘He got snapped. Snaps are different.’

‘And the houseboat?’

‘Coming right up.’

She disappeared again. The next album was even thicker: page after page of tiny details from the houseboat, carefully lit and photographed through a variety of lenses. The pattern from the corner of a lace curtain, with a smudge of sand dune in the background. The eye of Sam’s pet goldfish, later lost in a muddle over a change of water. The tip of an icicle, coldly blue against the rough nap of a hanging towel. Once again, there were no concessions to the obvious, no shots that might show the whole of the boat, that might help the casual observer get a fix on where this woman had once parked her life.

Was it deliberate, this lack of clues? Or had Ruth been deliberately reluctant to reveal anything as ordinary as an address?