Authors: Pauline Rowson
Mrs Davey pulled off her gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘I’m not sure there is anything to tell.
He didn’t mix very much.’
‘According to the young lady who showed me in, Mr Honeyman didn’t want to see Mr.
Bartholomew again. Did they argue?’
‘I don’t know. But Mr Honeyman did seem very upset after Mr Bartholomew’s visit.’
‘Do you know why he wanted to see Mr Honeyman? It’s a bit of a mystery to us.’
She shook her head. ‘Then it will probably have to remain one. I have no idea and I doubt Mr Honeyman would have confided in any of the other residents or staff.’
Another bloody dead end. ‘What did Mr Honeyman do for a living?’ I asked not really expecting her to provide the answer. I was growing used to disappointment
‘He was in the merchant navy, a chief officer or mate as I think they are sometimes called.’
I sat up at that. Turner’s painting immediately sprang to my mind. I had made the right connection: a fire on board a ship, not in the dockyard or a Royal Navy ship, but on a container ship, which meant the commercial port.
‘Who did he work for?’ I could trace the fire through his company. Judging by her expression though she obviously didn’t want to tell me.
Hastily I added, ‘I’d like to contact them. It’s possible that Mr Bartholomew was related to Mr Honeyman.’ I could see that I wasn’t convincing her.
‘I’m sorry that information is confidential.’
He’s dead, I felt like screaming at her. What harm can it do? ‘It’s important,’ I urged.
‘You’ll have to contact his solicitor.’
Seeing that I would get nothing further from her I left as her telephone rang and headed back to Portsmouth. I tried Brookfield again, to be told he was still on his course. I left yet another message for him to call me urgently. Jody hadn’t called me back either. I tried her again and got her answer machine. Damn! Where was she? I felt as though I was sitting on a time bomb. How long would it take before the police hauled me in again? Or how long before I was silenced like Jack, Ben and now poor old Mr Honeyman?
The roll-call of dead was growing. The accidents becoming too numerous. This threat wasn’t imaginary. Jack had known that and now so did I. I didn’t want anything to happen to Jody.
I dropped into the solicitors and asked to see Mr Goodman, only to be told that I needed to make an appointment. This I duly did, with much irritation, for the next morning. I wasn’t optimistic that he would give me the information I required so I decided to shortcut him – I called on Nigel Steep at the commercial port.
‘It’s good of you to spare me the time.’
Steep smiled, giving me the glint of a gold tooth. ‘No trouble at all, Adam. I’m sorry about what happened at the exhibition. You must be devastated.’
‘I hope they weren’t the paintings you wanted to buy.’
‘No, thankfully. Can they be cleaned?’
‘I expect so. I’ve left Martin sorting that out.
I’ve come because I’d like your help, Nigel.’
‘Of course anything.’
‘A friend of mine died recently, Jack Bartholomew. He was a fire fighter.’
‘I read about that. Tragic business. I didn’t realise you knew him. I’m sorry.’
I smiled my gratitude for the sympathy, which was genuinely given. ‘I want to paint a ship on fire as a tribute to him and I think he may have attended a fire on board a ship here or in the dockyard, in 1994. Do you recall it?’
Steep shook his head. ‘That would have been before my time. I’ve only been here five years.
Can’t the fire service help you?’
‘They’re checking their records, but I thought I’d just ask you.’ I tried to hide my disappointment.
Steep said, ‘You could try the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, they’ll know, or the Marine Accident Investigations Board. They keep a database of reportable incidents.’
My spirits lifted. ‘Do any of the ships that come in here carry hazardous cargos?’
‘Some. The most dangerous we’ve had is lead but if there’s a fire with that on board it gets ditched overboard very quickly, and that goes for other dangerous chemicals.’
I wondered what Jody would think of that and the possible danger to marine life. ‘What would be the procedure if there was a fire?’
‘The pilot would liaise with the Queen’s Harbour Master and decide whether to take the ship out of the harbour and then put it alongside a navy facility if possible, so that they could fight the fire.’
‘So if I were to paint a container ship on fire in the port that wouldn’t be realistic?’
Steep hesitated. ‘It’s possible but unlikely. A fire at sea would be better, with a tugboat or a navy boat squirting water jets on to it. Fire fighters would probably fight it from a safe distance after making sure the crew were off.’
‘And that would be big news?’
‘Oh yes.’
I had found nothing like that in the local newspaper. It had to be something else but I was so convinced I was right.
Outside I got the number of the Marine Accident Investigations Board and put in a call to them. A lady said she would check it out for me and e-mail me any details. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said they would check and could I call back tomorrow?
I grabbed a late lunch by the Hard where the tourists milled around the steel warship, HMS
Warrior
, and then made for the Maritime Museum hoping that Sandy Ditton would remember a fire in 1994.
‘Can’t say I do,’ he said, after I had given him my story about the painting.
We stepped out of the museum. A stiff damp wind rolled off the sea bringing with it the taste of salt and the smell of mud. Behind us was Nelson’s flagship, HMS
Victory
, with flags flying from its three tall masts.
Ditton took a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and offered me one. I declined.
Even before he spoke there was something about the thin, auburn-haired man in his late fifties that irritated me. Perhaps it was his air of self-importance.
I hadn’t forgotten that this man was on the watch in 1994 and could be the next cancer victim, like Brookfield. If Ditton had remembered, and it had been that easy, then Jack would have spoken to him and got to the truth quicker and certainly before he died. Ditton would also probably have met with an accident, which made me think that perhaps all those connected with whatever incident had prompted the cancer were dead. Honeyman could have been the last link, or rather the last but one: there was still me. Then it dawned on me. If Jack couldn’t recall the fire himself that had caused the cancer, but had had to interview men like Honeyman to trace it, then it couldn’t have been very memorable. It also meant that the others on the watch at that time were unlikely to recall it. This was a waste of time.
‘1994…That was the year Tony Blair took over the Labour Party.’
‘Was it?’ I replied disinterestedly, itching to get away.
‘Not so you’d notice any difference between his lot and the Tories. The Labour party stole the middle ground right under the Tories’ noses.
I stood for Parliament once, against Bill Bransbury. He was Conservative then. I didn’t get elected, glad I didn’t now, the state the party’s in, but old Bransbury’s done well for himself since he crossed the floor. Tony rewarded him of course, Minister for the Environment, Energy and Waste.’
Hastily I interrupted trying to salvage something from the interview. ‘Did you ever keep a diary or scrapbook?’
‘Only of my political career. You’re welcome to look at that.’
‘No thanks,’ I said rather hurriedly and saw Ditton frown at my ungraciousness.
‘I’d better be getting back.’ He pinched out his cigarette with his forefinger and thumb and returned the butt to the packet.
‘If anything occurs to you perhaps you’d give me call.’ I handed him a card
‘Be pleased to.’
I was unable to shake off the impression that I had made a mistake in involving Ditton. There was nothing to actively dislike about the man but I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. There was something not quite genuine about him, but that could be because of the size of the man’s ego. When he had stepped out of the museum he had the air of a man who owned it rather than worked in it, still that was no crime.
Every avenue I explored became a cul de sac.
Where the devil was Brookfield with those fire reports?
A voice hailed me and I looked up to see Jody waving at me. Relief and pleasure flooded through me as I hurried towards her.
‘Where have you been? I’ve been trying to contact you all day.’
Her smile quickly vanished to be replaced by an anxious expression. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘We can’t talk here.’
‘I’ll meet you in the café in Action Stations in five minutes. Just let me dump these.’
Only now did I see the large plastic bag full of barnacles and other sea encrustations in her hand, and that her hair was plastered to her small head.
A very large red and navy sailing jacket swamped her, reaching almost to her knees.
‘OK.’
I waited impatiently in the mezzanine café, my eyes scouring the entrance for her. A couple of minutes later she arrived, minus the sailing jacket and plastic bag.
‘Didn’t you get my message?’
‘I’ve been out on a harbour launch visiting the site where the
Mary Rose
was found and collecting sea specimens. What’s happened?’
I told her. She looked worried. I didn’t blame her. I was worried. ‘I don’t want you asking around, Jody. In fact, I don’t want you having anything more to do with this.’
She let out a long breath. In the silence that fell between us I could hear the sounds of the interactive attractions, the voice-overs of the videos and the whirring of the simulated rides in a Lynx helicopter.
Her eyes locked mine for a moment. She made to speak then seemed to change her mind.
‘I want you to promise not to do anything. This isn’t your problem.’
‘It’s not yours either, Adam,’ she said quietly.
‘I owe it to Jack.’ I hadn’t told her that I knew Ben. I hadn’t told her about Alison.
‘Jack’s dead. He won’t know. If you stop now you’ll be safe.’
I stared at her. There was something in her eyes and in her voice that bothered me. I couldn’t say what? I couldn’t pin it down. Was it more than concern? It sounded almost like a warning, but why should she warn
me
off? She looked away and scraped back her chair.
‘I must be going.’
‘Jody…?’
‘Yes?’
‘I can’t stop. I have to go on.’
She smiled sadly. ‘I thought you might say that.’
I watched her walk away. At the entrance she turned. As I made my way to Carol Rushmere’s I couldn’t get Jody’s expression and her tone of voice out of my mind. Neither could I forget her words. She hadn’t promised not to ask around. Why should she still want to help? This wasn’t her fight. This wasn’t anything to do with her. Jack had only been a neighbour. Or had he?
I rode slowly over the speed humps in the wet, cold December evening trying to shake off the feeling that there was more to Jody Piers than she had led me to believe, and more perhaps to her relationship with Jack. I didn’t much like those thoughts so I tried to shove them away.
They persisted, seeping into me like the rain.
Carol Rushmere handed me a plastic carrier bag containing three scrapbooks. I only needed the one that covered 1994 but I didn’t tell her that.
Boudicca was waiting for me when I reached home. I left her gobbling down her dinner as if I’d starved her for a week and took the carrier bag through to the lounge where I poured myself a large whisky and withdrew the three soft-covered books. I opened the first one, which spanned the period from 1990 to 1995. The first page contained two press cuttings of fires,
Woman
Rescued from Kitchen Blaze
and
Blaze Home hit by
Smoke Damage.
There were also some photographs of firemen dressed in women’s clothes at a pensioners’ Christmas party. The date was 1990. I recognised Jack dressed in a woman’s wig, stockings and suspenders with clown-like make-up on his face. A fleeting smiled tugged at the corners of my mouth.
The following pages chartered Vic Rushmere’s fire service career: a blaze at the old bus depot at Eastney before it was pulled down to build houses, an armed siege, a car crash, a warehouse blaze, and a fire wrecked garage. 1994 and more fires, an explosion in a block of flats, floods at the small village of Finchdean, more charity fundraising events, a naval exercise that involved a mock blaze on board a ship in the dockyard and a workman freed from a trench that had collapsed on him. Then came a series of press cuttings taken on bonfire night, a blaze in a hotel on the seafront, a house fire… but I had gone too far, I was now into 1995.
I flicked through the remaining pages, but could only see more of the same. Could it be that mock ship blaze? I turned back the page. It was the right year but wrong date. It was in April and not July. Perhaps the date on the postcard, 4th July, had nothing to do with the actual date of the fire but had just been used by Jack to draw my attention to the quotation?
Was there something on board that ship that had triggered the cancer? But it would only have been an exercise and a Royal Navy one rather than merchant navy. Honeyman wouldn’t have been involved in that.
I sat back with a sigh and sipped my whisky, feeling disheartened. Boudicca strolled in, glanced at me and seeing I was too restless for her to sit on, plumped for the rug in front of the fireplace. She didn’t like the leather chairs, which I think was the reason why Faye had bought them.
Surely it was mad of me to continue with this.
If I stopped now perhaps they’d leave me alone.
But they hadn’t left poor Ben Lydeway alone.
Jody’s words came back to me:
if you
stop now
you’ll be safe
. I didn’t owe those fire fighters anything; surely I could walk away? But I couldn’t.
No matter how many warnings I had I was determined to get to the truth.
The phone rang making me jump. It was Simon.
‘Cremation’s on Thursday 12.30pm. The wake’s at the house, Harriet’s organising it. Are you coming?’