The Power of One (2 page)

‘So …?'

Mac leaned forward to deposit his glass back on the table. ‘The coastguard seem to think there's been a shooting,' he said quietly. ‘And they don't seem to figure it for suicide.'

I
t was close on another hour before the yacht was brought into the marina. Andy Nevins, the young probationary officer based at Frantham, had arrived by then. His bright-red hair flamed in the afternoon sun and his freckled skin displayed signs of disliking such exposure. He waved away Rina's offer of suncream with an attempt at dignity. ‘I'll be fine, thank you, Mrs Martin. I don't think I can really stand here in uniform smearing meself with goo, can I?'

She saw Mac stifle a smile and tucked the tube of ‘goo' back into her capacious summer bag, a welcome present from her young friend, Ursula, a thirteen-year-old with a very distinctive sense of style. Fuchsia-pink candy stripes were not really Rina's usual choice, but she had to admit that the bag brightened up her usual pastel outfits and did make her question the received wisdom that older women should stick to lilacs, creams and lavenders. The long skirt she was wearing today was a further result of Ursula's influence and Rina had to admit that she loved the indigo linen and the way the bias cut encouraged it to swish around her ankles. It made her feel positively girlish, though for Rina it was more than fifty years since she had matched Ursula's age.

‘Looks like this is us,' Mac said. ‘Andy, you hang on here for a while, if I need you, I'll shout.'

‘Right you are, boss.'

The police medic had arrived and Rina and Andy watched as he and Mac were taken aboard and the coastguard directed them aft. Andy took the seat Mac had just vacated.

‘Who has jurisdiction here?' Rina mused. Usually at a crime scene the first uniformed officer on scene became, by default, the crime scene manager and secured the scene, kept it pristine until the CSI had done their thing and only then were the detectives allowed free rein.

‘Coastguard,' Andy said. ‘Then they'll sign off to uniform. I guess they just want to get the doc to confirm death and get the boss down there just to tell them what to do next.'

Rina nodded, then frowned. A vague feeling of familiarity had been growing as she had seen the yacht brought in. She knew this boat. At first she had just assumed that the familiarity stemmed from long pleasurable hours spent watching the comings and goings in the marina, but now as she caught sight of the name painted on the bow the vague feeling solidified into certainty.

She grabbed Andy's arm, much to the young man's discomfiture. ‘You OK, Mrs Martin?'

She nodded. ‘Andy, I know whose boat this is. It's
The Greek Girl
, it's Paul's boat. Paul de Freitas' boat.'

‘What, as in the people who bought the airfield? Those de Freitas's?'

Rina nodded. She released her hold on his arm and patted him instead. ‘Tell Mac,' she instructed. ‘I'd better be going, Andy. I won't be the only one who recognises that boat.'

Andy stared at her, open-mouthed, then he glanced back towards the vessel, looking to see if Mac was returning yet. By the time it occurred to him that maybe the police should be the ones to deliver the news of possible murder and not the redoubtable Mrs Martin, Rina was long gone.

‘R
egistered owner is Mr Paul de Freitas,' the coastguard told Mac. ‘We found him down in the aft cabin. The other man isn't known to us and we've not checked for identification. No one wanted to move the body until CSI had been down.'

‘And you're sure it's de Freitas?'

The coastguard nodded. ‘I know the man,' he said. ‘Or rather, I knew him. Practically lived aboard his boat. Mind you, if I owned something like this, so would I.'

Mac glanced around. They were standing in the main cabin. Well-upholstered seats surrounded a cherry wood table on which was a scatter of marine-related magazines. A small, but well-equipped galley kitchen could be glimpsed through a half-open sliding door. It was not the most luxurious yacht that Mac had ever seen, but it looked comfortable and, from the variety of personal items carefully stowed on shelves and racks, obviously well loved and well used. Other doors hinted at berths and heads and, although
The Greek Girl
was not new, Mac could see that the finish and quality had been high when she was and had stood the test of time.

‘Very pleasant,' he agreed. Or would have been. He studied the body of the unknown man lying face down just below the steps leading down into the cabin. Through the open door, Mac glimpsed the second body in the aft cabin. He had not gone in. The coastguard had confirmed death – the large bullet wound in de Freitas' head making that an easy task; the second, similar wound in the stranger's body also easy to identify. Once he had realized this was a crime scene, the coastguard had then backtracked on to the deck, taking care to mark his route, improvising with a pack of tissues he happened to have had in his pocket.

Miriam would be proud, Mac thought. She had recently conducted a seminar for the coastguard and lifeboat crews about the handling of crime scenes. Familiar voices drifting down from the deck told him that the local doctor who served on the police rota and who had now confirmed the coastguard's judgement of death was chatting to the SOCO team. He listened, but did not hear Miriam's voice, just that of the crime scene manager, Philip Olds, and Kieran Bates, one of his newer recruits. Mac waited for them to come down.

‘I like the tissues,' Philip commented with a laugh. ‘Nice bit of lateral thinking. Kieran, lay the plates on top, will you. Afternoon, Mac, how are you today?'

‘I'm good, thanks. I'll leave you to it, then. Not a lot more I can do here so I'd best get on and see the family.'

Philip nodded. ‘You've got an ID, then?'

Mac pointed. ‘The man in there is Paul de Freitas. As yet, we don't have a clue about his friend.'

‘Whoever he was, he's a big bugger,' the coastguard said. ‘You'll have your work cut out getting him back up on deck.'

Mac left them discussing the most effective way of extrication and took the designated route back on to the deck. He thanked the doctor and then started back on to the shore. He could see Andy was upset about something, practically jumping up and down in his agitation. Of Rina, there was no sign.

‘OK. Where's she gone?'

‘She said she knew who the boat belonged to,' Andy explained. ‘I'm sorry, boss, I looked away for just a second, like, and she was gone. Going to see the de Freitas's she said. She reckons it's their boat.' He looked anxiously at Mac, wondering if he'd get the blame for Rina's sudden departure.

Mac sighed. ‘Well you'd better drive me over there, then,' he said. ‘I sometimes think it might just be easier for me to retire and let Rina get on and do my job.'

T
he house owned by the brother and sister-in-law of Paul de Freitas was about a mile outside of Frantham and set back between the coast road and the cliff top. The views were magnificent, Mac thought, as they pulled into the drive and took in the scene of Frantham Bay and, just beyond the headland, a glimpse of the larger and more impressive Lyme Bay. Mature trees provided a windbreak for a large and well-planted garden that wrapped right around the house. The trees were older than the house, Mac noted. Vaguely, he remembered Rina telling him that the original had burned down and been replaced with this very seventies, very angular, picture-windowed block of pale brick and dark slate.

It was not, Mac thought, the most attractive place in the world, but as the anxious-looking woman in the dark-green dress, who introduced herself as Mrs Simms, the housekeeper, led them through into the massive rear lounge, Mac conceded that even seventies architecture could have its moments. The rear of the house was given over to the largest windows Mac had ever seen outside of a department store. A half-dozen steps led down into the room.

‘Wow,' Andy Nevins whispered, far too loudly as he followed him in.

Wow indeed, Mac thought. The room dropped down some two or three feet from the level of the hall and the architect had devised the windows so that, somehow, from that lower point, you lost all sight of the lawned garden. The view through the massive windows was of sea, blending today into the bluest of sky. Sea and sky and nothing but sea and sky.

The effect was giddying, oddly disorientating, but Mac would have bought this ugly, angular house for that view alone. He guessed this was what had swung things for the de Freitas's.

‘Inspector, what has happened to my brother?'

Mac turned to face the man. He knew Paul de Freitas by sight and would have taken this man for close kin even had he not known him to be. The same rather ascetic good looks, deep-brown eyes, dark curls, though Edward's were cut closely to his head as though he tried to tame the unruly mop his brother had possessed.

His face was grey beneath its light tan and the hair looked, to Mac, to be the only thing over which he currently had any control.

Edward de Freitas shook himself. ‘I'm sorry,' he said, extending a trembling hand and coming over to greet his visitors properly. ‘I'm forgetting my manners. I'm forgetting everything. Rina here arrived just after we'd had a phone call from the marina, something about
The Greek Girl
being towed into the marina and police swarming all over. I was just about to go and see for myself when Rina arrived. She says …'

‘She says Paul is dead?' The woman standing by the picture window sounded disbelieving.

Mac turned his attention to her. Tall, slim, blonde, dressed in faded jeans and an expensive-looking white shirt that was cut to emphasise a very slim waist and a surprising degree of curve for a figure so slender. ‘I'm sorry … Mrs de Freitas? We don't have all the facts yet, but your … brother-in-law?'

She nodded.

‘I'm afraid you were told right. He's dead. I'm truly sorry for your loss.'

He glanced over at Rina, seated in a large armchair set close by the window and nursing a china cup and saucer. ‘I'm also sorry that other people got to you before I did,' he said quietly. ‘You really should have been properly informed.'

‘Oh, rubbish,' Edward told him briskly. ‘I'm so glad Rina
did
come to see us. I could have gone down there, not knowing anything, been completely out of my depth. No, no, I don't blame you, Inspector, of course I don't, but I've already learnt that news travels faster round here by word of mouth than it does by the average internet connection. But what happened? Was there an accident? Rina seemed to think …'

Edward de Freitas sat down and his wife came over to him. She stood behind the easy chair with her hands tightly clasping the back, fingers digging in to the upholstery and the knuckles white with tension.

‘Rina seems to think that someone killed him,' she said. ‘Is that what happened?'

She was daring him to confirm it. Waiting for him to tell her that there'd been a mistake and it was either not her brother-in-law or that at the very worst, he'd had an accident, died of natural causes, anything but …

‘I'm so sorry,' Mac said again. ‘But he was shot and so was his friend. We know nothing more at present, but the CSI are there and in an hour or so, I may be able to tell you more.'

‘Oh my God,' Edward whispered.

‘Shot?' Lydia de Freitas stared at him. ‘Shot by whom? He was on board his bloody boat! How could anyone have shot him?'

‘We don't know,' Mac said. ‘I'm so sorry not to be able to tell you any more.'

‘You said there was someone with him?' Edward seemed only just to have registered that fact. ‘Who? Could this other man have shot Paul?'

Mac shook his head. Both men had been shot from behind. Murder followed by suicide seemed, on the face of it, very unlikely. ‘It was someone else,' Mac said. ‘A third person.'

‘But who was with him?' Lydia was clearly baffled. ‘Paul hardly ever took anyone on board. He liked to be alone out there. That was why he
bought
the bloody boat. He liked to think things through, to work on his designs without anyone bothering him. Why would he have taken someone out there with him?'

She seemed, Mac thought, almost more upset by the fact that he'd let someone into his private space than she was at his death. He logged the thought for later analysis. ‘We don't know who the second man was,' Mac said. ‘When I left the marina they'd found nothing on the boat that identified him. Nothing on the … nothing on the body. He's a big man, six two, six three. Very broad?' He paused, hoping for a moment of revelation from the de Freitas's.

Lydia shrugged, her face blank. ‘That's all you can tell us?'

‘I'm sorry, yes.'

‘Hair? Eye colour? What did he look like?' Lydia de Freitas hadn't quite got it yet; just why Mac could give so little description.

Her husband was quicker. ‘You couldn't tell those things,' he said. ‘You couldn't see. He was shot in the head?'

‘From behind, yes,' Mac confirmed. From behind, at close range and, Mac and the coastguard had speculated, from a slight angle, as though his killer had been above him on the steps. There was now a large and messy exit wound where most of his features had once been. Mac guessed that even dental records would be problematic.

Lydia found a straw to grasp and held on to it like it was a life preserver. ‘So, how do you know it's Paul, then? If you can't tell much about the other man, how come you're so sure about Paul?'

‘Because the coastguard knew him,' Mac said. ‘Well enough to be sure. Paul was shot … differently.' It was still possible to see his face. The track of the bullet seemed to have been from the base of the skull and upwards, so far as Mac could tell from the swift look he had taken. He preferred not to speculate further, especially in the current context. The top of Paul de Freitas' head had been missing, but his face was still there, more or less. Enough to identify.