Turnstone (21 page)

‘What happened there?’

‘We capsized. Twice.’

‘And?’

‘Abandoned ship. After the second time.’

Faraday peered harder at the chart. There was a line of tiny numbers where
Tootsie
’s crew had taken to the life raft.

‘Our position,’ Pete explained. ‘This isn’t the original chart, of course. I’ve transferred all the details from memory.’

‘But the position’s right?’

‘It’s spot on.’ Pete offered him a rueful smile. ‘That was the GPS read-out the second time we went over. It’s like winning the Lottery. You never forget the numbers.’

GPS was a hand-held electronic marvel carried nowadays by most yachts. Fed by data from satellites, it could fix your position anywhere in the world, accurate to a hundred metres.

‘You had time to make a distress call?’

‘Too right. In weather like that, you have someone sitting on the VHF. Beyond a certain sea state, it feels odds-on that you’ll go over. The last thing you need is to be floating around in the middle of nowhere with the world looking the other way.’

Faraday told him about Charlie Oomes. For
Marenka
, the end had come so quickly that no one had managed to get a message out on the yacht’s VHF.

‘They got the life raft away?’

‘Three of them did.’

‘And they had the EPIRB with them? And a grab bag with a mobe?’

‘The EPIRB definitely. I’m not sure about the grab bag.’

The EPIRB was a hand-portable radio beacon, lashed to the pushpit on the stern. Stowed elsewhere would be a grab bag stuffed with survival essentials, including a mobile phone. If you still had a brain, they were the last things you snatched before you jumped for the life raft.

‘The EPIRB sends a position?’

‘Yes. It’s linked to a GPS and keeps transmitting the latest fix. It’s good kit.’

Faraday produced a series of numbers Dawn Ellis had passed on from the Rescue Co-ordination Centre. They’d logged the position of every rescue and this one had featured Charlie Oomes.

Pete was studying the co-ordinates.

‘When were they picked up?’

‘14.16 on the Monday.’

Pete was using a ruler to calculate the exact position of the rescue. Finally, he pencilled a tiny cross due west of the Isles of Scilly and then stepped back from the chart, a frown on his face.

‘That’s well south of the track,’ he said. ‘What was he doing down there?’

‘The yacht went over in darkness, just before dawn. I gather they had some problem with the beacon. Otherwise they’d have triggered it at once.’

‘What was the matter with it?’

‘Dunno. Apparently one of the guys fixed it. He’s an electronics buff.’

‘Fixed the EPIRB?’ Pete glanced at Faraday. ‘It’s a sealed unit. You can’t get at it.’

Faraday studied him a moment, and then went back to the chart, trying to estimate the distance between the track to the Fastnet Rock and the point where the rescue helicopter had plucked Oomes and the others from their life raft. According to the scale, it was nearly thirty miles.

‘You’re telling me that’s a long way to drift?’

‘A helluva way. But then’ – he shrugged – ‘you’re talking exceptional weather.’

‘Force eleven winds? Out of the north-west?’

‘After the eye had moved through?’ He nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘And that would be enough to account for the drift? If they were in the raft for ten hours?’

‘Yeah … maybe … what sort of state were they in?’

Faraday thought about the hospital ward in Plymouth. Nearly a day later, Oomes had been sitting up in bed with soup and a crusty roll but his face had been a mess and the other two were still suffering.

‘Not good,’ he said. ‘Would that make sense?’

‘Definitely. We were in the raft for less than an hour and I wouldn’t want to go through that again.’

Faraday took him back to the start of the race. It was Saturday afternoon, just after lunch, and for the rest of the afternoon, the smaller yachts were tacking down the Solent towards the Needles.

‘We cleared Hurst Castle around late afternoon,’ Pete said. ‘The wind was eight knots or so, maybe less. We wouldn’t have been through the Needles Channel until six or maybe seven.’

Tootsie
had been a twenty-nine-foot Sadler, broadly comparable to
Marenka
. Faraday’s pencil had come to a halt at the very tip of the Isle of Wight. Ahead lay the passage across Poole Bay to St Alban’s Head and the distant swell of the Purbeck Hills.

‘Still lots of boats?’ Faraday was looking at Pete.

‘Everywhere. The maxis and the multi-hulls had buggered off by then but you couldn’t move for us weekenders.’

Faraday nodded. Returning to the chart, he wanted to know about the decision awaiting skippers beyond the Needles. According to Charlie Oomes, this was the moment when the race could be won or lost. You either stayed inshore with the lemmings, or drove south in search of glory.

‘That’s true. But it was a brave man who went for the starboard tack.’

His finger slipped down into mid-Channel. By abandoning the coast, he said, you were taking a huge gamble. The weather had been dominated by an anticyclone over northern France. Hence the light south-westerly winds. There was no evidence that this area of high pressure was about to move so the long tack south would serve no purpose at all. Later in the race, a deepening low-pressure system over the eastern Atlantic would come into play, changing the weather completely, but on the Saturday night, the smart money was on the inshore route. That, at least, had been the consensus aboard
Tootsie
.

‘And were you right?’ Faraday asked carefully.

‘Yes. Unless you know different.’

‘Oomes says there was a wind shift in mid-Channel. He says Potterne was right. He says it backed.’

‘That’s news to me.’ Pete was staring at the chart again. ‘Off-hand, I can’t think of anyone else who went south. Who’s this Potterne?’

‘The navigator. One of the guys who died.’

‘And he really found wind down there?’

‘So his skipper says.’

‘Then he must have been psychic. Maybe it was some local effect. A fluke breeze. It can happen.’

‘Can we check? Are there records?’

‘Sure. Talk to the Met Office. Or one of the private outfits. They pick up data from the weather-buoys. Someone’ll know. Someone always does. I’ll make some inquiries, if you like.’

‘
You
will?’

‘Why not? It’s not time I’m short of.’

Faraday studied him for a moment, puzzled by his tone of voice. It wasn’t self-pitying, or even wistful, but totally matter-of-fact. There was a job to be done here. And Pete was glad to lend a hand.

He drew Faraday back to the chart.

‘So your guys are down to the south here somewhere?’ He drew an imaginary line into mid-Channel. ‘Then what?’

Faraday shrugged. West of Pete’s finger he could see nothing but white space, dotted with tiny figures.

‘What are these?’

‘Depth readings.’

‘This one?’

‘That’s sixty-nine metres. Over two hundred feet.’

Faraday sat back, feeling suddenly pleased with himself. His theory, after all, had been right. They’d shipped Maloney’s body out of Port Solent aboard
Marenka
. They’d wrapped him up and hidden him aboard, and at some point the following night, with the race under way, they’d slipped him quietly overboard. Weights would have taken him to the bottom. The bottom was hundreds of feet beyond the reach of a mere detective. Game, set and match to Henry Potterne. A genius indeed.

Faraday strolled to the tall glass doors and slid one back. He kept a bagful of stale crumbs for exactly moments like this one, and he took a handful now, tossing them on to the lawn. A couple of starlings appeared from nowhere, pecking savagely at the bread while Faraday shared his conclusions with Pete Lamb.

‘You’re telling me they
all
knew?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘How come?’

Faraday explained about the watch-keeping system. If it was the middle of the night and both the young lads had their heads down, the others could have bundled Maloney overboard.

Pete glanced at the map again, unconvinced.

‘I don’t know the crew,’ he said, ‘and I don’t know the personalities involved. But from where I sit—’

Faraday butted in.

‘Oomes is a monster,’ he said. ‘He dominated them all.’

‘Sure, but even so it’s a hell of a gamble. OK, you can maybe hide the body but it’s bloody uncomfortable down below and there’s no guarantee the kids will get to sleep. For a start, there’s all kinds of crap lying around and most of it’s soaking wet. You’ve got spare sails, and boxes of food, and all sorts. Plus you’re out in the ocean. The sea will be running from the west and on a beat like that the boat is taking it on the bow, thump-thump-thump, hour after hour. I don’t know about a Sigma, but trying to kip on
Tootsie
was a nightmare. The mastfoot for one thing. It’s rotating all the time, right above your head. Squeak-squeak-squeak. One of our guys even tried squirting washing-up liquid under it. Drives you insane in the end.’

‘But you have to sleep sometime,’ Faraday pointed out.

‘Sure.’

‘So maybe they did.’

‘Yeah,’ Pete said, ‘and maybe they didn’t.’

They were both still gazing at the chart when there was a knock at the front door. When Faraday opened it, he found himself looking at Cathy.

‘Is Pete here?’ she said. ‘Only I’ve just had his mum on.’

Faraday stood aside, inviting her in. Pete was still in the living room. The sound of Cathy’s voice had brought a smile to his face.

‘Hi,’ he said, nodding at her.

She might have been a stranger. She was polite, but distant. Quickly, she told him about the call that his mum had taken. His divisional commander wanted him to ring urgently. Something about the inquiry into the Harrison shooting. Faraday nodded towards the phone, drawing Cathy into the kitchen. When he suggested coffee, she shook her head.

‘I’ve talked to the race people again,’ she said. ‘They say they had no contact at all with Oomes during the race.’

‘And the radio stations?’

‘Dawn and one of the lads are still working on it. The favourite seems to be Pendennis. Channel sixty-two. When they get a moment, they’ll check their records. Every boat has a call sign, by the way.
Marenka
’s was Bustler.’

‘Nice.’

Faraday smiled. Next door, he could sense the conversation coming to an end. Seconds later, Pete was with them in the kitchen.

‘My super,’ he explained to Cathy, ‘suggesting I get myself a good lawyer.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Positive on the blood tests.’ His eyes found Faraday’s. ‘Fucked up big-time, didn’t I?’

Twenty-One

Faraday was back in his office, waiting for a return call from Pendennis Radio when his mobile began to trill. It was Ruth Potterne. She got to the point at once. She’d been catching up on her paperwork and she’d found an e-mail that Faraday might like to take a look at.

‘What does it say?’

‘It’s odd. It seems to be about a Wyllie.’

‘A what?’

‘He’s a marine artist. Did lots of stuff round here. He’s becoming hugely collectable.’

Faraday was trying to visualise Maloney’s cramped little bedroom. The framed print beside his PC.

‘Pen-and-ink stuff? Skiffs in the harbour entrance?’

‘That’s him.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘This e-mail came last Friday. I’ve only just seen it.’

‘Is it signed?’

‘Yes.’

‘So who sent it?’

‘Stewart Maloney.’

The PC was in a big first-floor study at the back of the house. It was obvious at once that the room had been chiefly used by Henry. There were dried flowers in extravagant vases, shelves of books on various naval campaigns and a couple of exquisite watercolours he’d obviously kept back from public sale. Watching Ruth at the keyboard, Faraday was reminded of a blind person in a strange room, every next step fraught with danger.

‘I hate these things,’ she admitted. ‘Henry was the whizz with all this stuff.’

‘He had a laptop as well?’

‘Yes, he’d just bought himself a new one. He took it to sea with him. He’d send me messages sometimes, but I always forgot to check for them, We’ve got a perfectly good phone. Why didn’t he use that?’

At last she managed to find the e-mail. ‘Picked you up a Wyllie,’ the message went. ‘Guess who’s home this afternoon? Love, Stu. P.S. Wipe this soonest!’

Love Stu?

Faraday stared at the screen. If he needed proof that she really had been involved with Maloney, that they knew their way around each other’s lives, that they swapped fond messages and spent time together, then here it was, white script on a blue background, dancing in front of his eyes.

She held her hands wide, a gesture of helplessness.

‘The man lived in his head. I’d no more go and see his bloody Wyllie than fly to the moon. And he knew that.’

Faraday waved a hand at the screen.

‘Love, Stu?’

‘Fantasy.’

‘You never saw him? Never met at all?’

‘Never. He used to phone me when he knew Henry was away. I think I told you. Listen to those calls, and you’d think we’d been lovers for years.’

‘How did he know Henry was away?’

‘Because he was with him. They were out sailing together. He’d sneak off before they left the marina. Or phone as soon as they got back. On Sunday mornings. It became a kind of joke. I could set my watch by it.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Pretty much anything. How good he’d be for me. How natural we’d be together. How he just wanted the one chance. Lucky old me, eh?’

Faraday fought the temptation to believe her. Was it really credible that she’d fended him off all this time? That curiosity or boredom hadn’t got the better of her? She was studying his reflection in the window. She could be almost psychic sometimes.

‘I needn’t have shown you this,’ she pointed out. ‘I needn’t have phoned.’

It was true. Faraday indicated the P.S. on the screen.

‘Do you know how to wipe an e-mail? Get rid of it?’

‘No. But I could have found out. If it was that important.’

‘Sure.’ Faraday nodded. ‘Maybe he wanted to tell you how to do it, talk you through it.’

‘Here, do you mean?’ Ruth looked startled.

‘Why not? It gets him past the door.’

Faraday peered at the message again. It had been logged in at ten forty-six on Friday morning, the sixth of August. By the time Henry Potterne was bringing
Marenka
across, Maloney’s billet doux would have been sitting in his wife’s e-mail box for several hours.

‘Did Henry ever access your mail with his laptop?’

‘I’ve no idea. Could he have done?’

‘Unless you protected it, yes.’ Faraday paused. ‘
Did
you protect it?’

That same gesture again, utter helplessness.

‘I wouldn’t know how to,’ she said, ‘so the answer’s no.’

Faraday glanced at his watch. The guy in charge down at Pendennis Radio was going off shift in less than an hour. Maloney’s apartment was barely five minutes away.

‘This Wyllie …’

‘Yes?’

‘Maybe you ought to take a look at it.’

*

He drove to the seafront, fighting the temptation to look at her. Had she been this way before? Had she walked or driven this tight little grid of streets? Would her eyes, or that tiny hint of amusement that sometimes curled her lips, give her away? She sat beside him, totally impassive, explaining about a monument she wanted to build for Sam, her dead son, on one of the lonelier reaches of Bembridge Harbour.

‘Something simple,’ she murmured. ‘Maybe just a cairn of stones or something.’

Faraday parked on the seafront opposite Maloney’s block of flats. He still had Emma’s key, and standing on the pavement, looking up at the window of Maloney’s flat, he knew that this was the moment of decision. As soon as he unlocked the big communal street door, as soon as he invited Ruth inside, the building would bear traces of her presence. Contaminated like this, the evidence that she might have been here with Maloney would be useless. Any half-decent defence lawyer would tear the prosecution case to pieces. Of course Mrs Potterne had paid a visit. She’d come with DI Faraday.

Ruth glanced up at him.

‘Where now?’ she inquired.

Maloney’s flat smelled even worse than before. Ruth stood in the front room, her eyes drawn at once to the sunshine outside the window. The contrast to Faraday’s last glimpse of the view couldn’t have been more vivid. A car ferry was churning past one of the old mud-pie sea forts. Weekend yachtsmen stitched back and forth, white sails against a deep blue sea, while immediately below the window couples were sprawled semi-naked on the vast expanse of the common, the grass a rich emerald-green after all the rain.

Faraday touched Ruth lightly on the arm.

‘Yours,’ he said, indicating the row of photos on the wall.

It was a statement, not a question, and Ruth nodded, giving each one a moment or two’s attention, a gesture – Faraday thought – of disassociation. By coming here, by being on these walls, these pictures had betrayed her.

‘Strange,’ she said.

She was looking at the debris on the table, at once fascinated and repelled. A tableau frozen in time. A still frame from the movie of someone else’s life.

At length, she wrinkled her nose and pulled a face.

‘The milk’s gone off.’

Faraday was watching her carefully.

‘It’s in the fridge,’ he said.

She glanced back towards the door.

‘Where’s the kitchen?’

‘You really don’t know?’

‘No.’

The kitchen was jigsawed into a narrow galley beside the bathroom. Faraday led the way then stood aside. The fridge was opposite the sink beside the window. Ruth stepped towards it, then paused.

‘Is it OK to touch things?’ she queried.

‘Technically, no.’

‘So what shall I do?’

Faraday looked at her for a moment, then grinned. For the first time in days he felt he was making progress.

‘Open it,’ he said. ‘It’s a bloody awful smell.’

The picture was still in the bedroom. Ruth held it up to the light, her mouth curling in amusement.

‘It’s lovely,’ she said, ‘but it isn’t Wyllie. The artist’s name is Rowland Langmaid. Typical really. Stewart couldn’t even get that right.’

‘You got off lightly,’ Faraday said dryly. ‘You think it’s a coincidence he kept it here?’

He waved a hand. A week later, the litter of clothes around the unmade bed looked even more tawdry.

Ruth was shaking her head.

‘You really think I’d come to a place like this?’ she said.

Faraday shrugged. He realised he felt wonderful.

‘People don’t let decor put them off,’ he said. ‘Not when they’re in love.’

She eyed him for a moment, amused.

‘Is that the detective speaking?’

‘No.’ Faraday shook his head. ‘It bloody isn’t.’

On the way out of the flat, Faraday’s mobile began to ring. He stepped out into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him. It was the shift leader from the radio station in Pendennis. He’d at last had a chance to go through the log and he’d come across a note of a contact on the Sunday night.

‘The yacht
Marenka?

‘That’s right.’

‘She came through at twenty twenty-one. Channel sixteen. It was a bit of a mystery, actually.’

‘Why?’

‘We thought it was a Mayday at first. The person went through all the right procedures. Then it was cancelled.’

‘Same voice?’

‘No, definitely not. There’s a note on the log here. It says “Skipper apologised”. It seems there’d been some mistake.’

‘
Skipper
?’

‘That’s what it says.’

Marty Harrison had been out of intensive care for a couple of days by the time his lawyer, Morry Templeman, paid a visit. The single-bedded private room was tucked away at the end of a corridor on the third floor. An extravagant display of flowers brightened the bedside cabinet and the nursing staff had run out of space for the dozens of cards that had arrived since the shooting. One of them, featuring a black-and-white scene from
Reservoir Dogs
, had come from the Unofficial Pompey Supporters Club. ‘Back in the Pink with Mr Blue’, went the message inside.

Templeman pulled up a chair and made himself comfortable. The afternoon was beginning to cool at last but even the walk from the lift had left him gasping.

Harrison eyed him from the pillow.

‘You wanna be careful, Morry,’ he said. ‘They might never let you out.’

‘You think that’s funny?’

‘Yeah.’ Harrison nodded. ‘I do.’

He wanted to laugh at the old man but laughter still hurt. His fingers crabbed down the front of his pyjama top.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘I know why you’ve come.’

Templeman peered at the big square of gauze bandage taped to Harrison’s chest. The bullet had passed beneath his heart, shattering a couple of ribs. The entry wound was neat enough but the serpent tattoo that coiled down his back would never look the same again.

Templeman reached out for the bandage. He wanted to touch it.

‘They change it every other day,’ Harrison told him. ‘Stings like a bastard.’

A trolley clattered by outside, the orderly pausing to have a word or two with Dave Pope. Pope turned up at the hospital for a couple of hours most days, standing guard in case one of Harrison’s many rivals decided to simplify the local pecking order. It was highly unlikely to happen, but Marty’s entourage knew it was good for the boss’s ego and that alone was enough to justify the pantomime. Harrison was watching Dave Pope now. His enormous bulk cast a long shadow through the slatted Venetian blinds on the door.

‘We should have asked the police for protection,’ Templeman said. ‘It’s the least they owe us.’

‘The Filth? You’re joking. Given half a chance, they’d finish the job.’

It was Templeman’s turn to smile. He’d come armed with half a bottle of whisky and a couple of good books, but the best present for his client was the news he passed on now.

Harrison couldn’t believe it.

‘Pissed? You’re winding me up.’

‘It’s true, my friend.’

‘The guy that shot me?’

‘Indeed.’

Harrison took a moment or two to absorb the news then, with a patience that surprised his lawyer, began to button up his pyjama jacket.

‘We’ll have them,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Bastards.’

Mid-evening, Faraday abandoned the office and drove down to Old Portsmouth. All afternoon, he’d been trying to think through the sequence of events that might have led to the cancelled Mayday from
Marenka
. A mistake was out of the question. On a boat that professional, with veterans like Henry Potterne aboard, you simply didn’t fool around with something as serious as a distress call. No, it had to be something else, some sudden drama that had driven one or other of the crew to dial channel sixteen and call for help. After thirty hours banged up on a thirty-three-foot yacht, someone’s nerve had broken. But whose? And why?

Faraday parked his car and wandered down through the maze of cobbled streets towards the water. This was the corner of the island where the city had begun, an arm of shingle that curled in from the harbour mouth, enclosing a tiny pocket of sheltered water that had become the Camber Dock.

For eight hundred years, merchants had traded from here, and the scents and sounds of the tiny harbourside settlement lived on in the street signs and the names of the pubs. Spice Island. Oyster Street. The Still and West. The naval dockyard had expanded to the north, hundreds of acres of dry docks, mast lofts, victualling stores and all the other facilities that had made this battered city indispensable in time of war, but Faraday’s favourite haunt was still Old Portsmouth with its chaotic mix of ancient fortifications, cobbled streets and gimcrack post-war infilling. Until very recently, no one had very much bothered about Old Portsmouth, which was altogether in keeping with the neglect that had settled on the rest of the city.

Faraday bought himself a beer and settled on one of the new stone plinths on Point, the tip of the tiny promontory of Spice Island. From here, the view of the harbour was uninterrupted. He loved this place, not simply the waterfront but the city itself. He loved its busyness and its blunt, unvarnished ways. He loved the rough pulse of life that pumped through the pubs and endless terraced streets. Portsmouth wasn’t a city you’d choose for sparkling dinner parties or dainty conversation, and for those two blessings Faraday was eternally grateful. In a country which had largely sold its soul, it remained uncursed by money.

Faraday thought about Charlie Oomes. If Portsmouth sometimes felt like a state of mind – stoic, gruff, implacably stubborn – then Oomes would understand that because Oomes came from a very similar culture. Life in South London must have been Pompey without the seaside, but Oomes had turned his back on all that and Faraday despised him for it. He’d seen what success had brought the man, how success had fenced him in, and what angered Faraday more than anything else was the assumption that money, his money, could buy anything. It wasn’t just jealousy that had killed Stewart Maloney. It was the arrogance that came with Oomes’s assumption that you could simply cover it up. Money had delivered Ian Hartson. Money had handcuffed Derek Bissett. But money, in the end, couldn’t buy the perfect murder. Not if Faraday’s job meant anything at all.