Authors: Graham Hurley
‘By the way,’ she said, ‘Elaine’s a good mate of Marty Harrison’s, too. He’s been using one of her brothers on various jobs. Dave Pope his name is. I think Marty keeps an eye on her just in case things ever get rough. That’s the feeling I get.’
Faraday was looking round. The spotless lounge. The carefully lit marine water colours on the pale grey walls. The rack of CDs beside the audio stack. This place could belong to any successful career woman, and in a sense it did, but not for a moment could he imagine the naked bulk of Charlie Oomes spread-eagled over the dainty Paisley-patterned sofa.
He walked across to the big picture window. The view across the marina pontoons was busy with yachts.
‘That’s Oomes’s place, there.’
Cathy was beside him. He followed her pointing finger, recognising the back of the house. A pair of magpies were cavorting on the tiny square of turf. One for sorrow, Faraday thought. Two for joy.
‘She had a perfect view,’ Cathy was saying, ‘and she definitely remembers the boat being there.’
‘How come?’
‘She was dreading Oomes being back and getting on his mobile. She knew he was away racing all week, but apparently he’s the kind of guy who’s always changing his mind. Some weeks he wants it all the time. Then she won’t see him for a month. Sound familiar?’
Faraday glanced at her. With her sunglasses off, the damage to her face was worse than he’d thought. Maybe that was why these two women got on so well, comrades-in-arms on the same front line.
Elaine reappeared with a laden tray. Faraday couldn’t mask his astonishment.
‘They’re chocolate biscuits,’ Cathy pointed out gently, ‘and I told her you like those.’
Elaine wanted a deal: a blind eye to her business dealings in return for whatever she could remember about Friday afternoon. On principle, Faraday hated this kind of bartering. To him it smacked of Paul Winter’s style of detective work, creating a web of obligation and counter-obligation, but Maloney’s disappearance was beginning to matter a great deal to him, and he sensed that the breakthrough would only come from a remorseless examination of events on Friday afternoon.
‘OK,’ he said in the end. ‘Nothing to the management here and not a word to the Inland Revenue.’
‘Can I have that in writing?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘So how do I know …?’ Elaine looked to Cathy for help.
‘You don’t,’ Cathy said quickly. ‘You have to trust us.’
‘
Trust
you? In my business that gets you screwed.’
There was a long silence. Faraday refused to go further. Finally she shrugged, then kicked off her slippers and sat on the sofa with her long golden legs tucked under her. The yacht, she said, had arrived around lunchtime. She’d known at once that it was
Marenka
because Charlie was subtle that way and had made a point of scrawling the name in huge white loopy script across the side. Marenka was his mum’s name and he wanted the whole world to know how proud he was of her. White on red. You couldn’t miss it.
Faraday helped himself to another chocolate biscuit. Marenka had been the next of kin on the fax from the RORC people in London. Only her surname was Dunlop, not Oomes.
‘That’s Charlie’s real name, too.’ Elaine was playing with the thin gold chain looped around her neck. ‘His dad was some kind of gangster. Ronnie Dunlop?’
Faraday frowned. The name triggered a distant memory. Way back in the fifties, a Ronnie Dunlop had run with the Richardson gang, terrorising whole swathes of South London.
‘Charlie hated him. That’s why he got rid of Dunlop. He did it by deed poll. Oomes is his wife’s name. He showed me pictures once. She’s Dutch-Indonesian.’
‘He’s still married?’
‘Far as I know. Though she never comes down here.’
Faraday at last produced the photos, spreading them on the low glass table in front of the sofa. Elaine had been watching the yacht on and off all afternoon, just in case Charlie was aboard.
‘Did you spot any of these guys?’
Elaine studied the photos one by one. Finally, a scarlet nail descended on Maloney.
‘He was the one who came later. He went on board the yacht. He was wearing a leather jacket and there was something wrong with his arm.’
‘Had you seen him before?’
‘No.’
‘Not in Charlie’s house?’
‘I’ve never been in Charlie’s house. Charlie doesn’t mix business with pleasure.’
She returned to the photos. There were two other faces she recognised. One of them was Ian Hartson. The other was an older man, standing beside Charlie in the well of the cockpit. Faraday studied him closely, hearing Mrs Beedon’s querulous tones. Tall man. Gaunt-looking face. And, yes, a red anorak.
‘What was he wearing when you saw him on Friday?’
‘That same top. The red thing.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Yes, he had it on when he brought the yacht in.’
‘Did he stay here all afternoon?’
‘I dunno.’ She frowned. ‘No, I don’t think he did. I saw him come back from somewhere. That would have been later. Don’t ask me when.’
Faraday was eyeing the remaining biscuit. According to Mrs Beedon, the stranger in the red anorak had left Maloney’s flat just after half past three.
‘Was he carrying anything when he came back?’
‘Who?’
‘This guy here.’
Elaine stared at the photo.
‘Yeah.’ She nodded slowly. ‘He had something wrapped up in paper. Under his arm, like.’
‘Big? Small?’
‘Big enough.’ She shaped an oblong in the air.
Faraday gazed at her for a moment, then asked for a refill from the cafetière. Eleven years on the CID had taught him never to jump to conclusions but sometimes, just sometimes, it was hard not to.
He knew that the stranger in the red anorak had come calling on Maloney. He knew that there’d been some kind of row. He knew that minutes later this same man had left carrying something under his arm. He knew that Maloney had pursued him back to Charlie Oomes’s place here in Port Solent. And now, thanks to a nervous call-girl dreading a summons on her mobile, he also knew where the two men’s paths had finally crossed.
He picked up the photo again.
‘Maloney, this one, definitely went aboard?’
‘Definitely.’
‘And this other guy was already there?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Did you see Maloney again?’
‘No.’
‘And when did the boat leave?’
‘Around half five.
Home and Away
had just finished.’
Faraday exchanged glances with Cathy. This wasn’t conclusive, far from it. Maloney could easily have slipped away but that would probably have meant another taxi, and with Barry Decker’s card in his pocket, the chances were that he’d have called Aqua.
Faraday made the call on his mobile from the kitchen. The despatcher he’d talked to earlier was back on shift. He asked her whether she’d have time later to check for any other calls on Friday from a Mr Maloney, but she said there was no point.
‘I looked already,’ she said, ‘and there weren’t.’
For once, it was Faraday’s turn to ask for a meeting with Bevan. When he got to the superintendent’s office, his door was already open. Bevan turned from his computer screen and waved the detective into a chair. After their recent run-in, Faraday sensed at once that his uniformed boss was in the mood for building bridges.
‘Beaten up any teachers lately?’ Bevan grunted.
Faraday told him what had happened at Port Solent. After tracing Maloney to Charlie Oomes’s house, and getting a positive ID on the stranger in the red anorak, he saw no reason to pursue the McIlvenny line of inquiry any further.
‘How strong is the ID?’
‘Strong enough.’
Faraday explained about Elaine Pope and her business links with Charlie Oomes.
‘You don’t think she’s trying to put one over on him?’
‘I doubt it. Henry Potterne is the one she ID’d.’
‘Yeah, but even so, boyo. A tart in the witness box? Think it through.’
Bevan’s views on call-girls were well known, a throw-back – Faraday assumed – to his chapel upbringing in the Welsh valleys. Given a choice, he’d run them all out of town.
Along the corridor, someone was ranting about the latest headquarters edict on overtime.
‘You haven’t found a body yet,’ Bevan pointed out.
‘No, sir.’
‘So there could still be a million reasons for the guy going missing.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘What are we looking at then, resources-wise? Some forensic and a couple of extra hands?’
‘Yes, sir. Plus a dive in the marina at the front of Oomes’s property.’
‘Dive? What are we looking for?’
‘A weapon.’
‘You really think this man’s dead?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Faraday looked him in the eye. ‘I do.’
‘Some jump, isn’t it?’
Faraday didn’t answer. When Bevan inquired how everything else was going, he told him about Kate Symonds, the journalist from the freesheet. Mention of the audio cassette made Bevan wince.
‘I knew she was trouble,’ he muttered, gazing at the envelope Faraday had produced.
‘You’re right, sir. She’s threatening to publish the transcript.’
Faraday outlined her terms for silence. Bevan shook his head at once.
‘No can do,’ he said. ‘No way.’
He sighed, then got to his feet and went to the window.
‘This Maloney business,’ he said at last, ‘what kind of time frame are we talking about?’
Faraday hesitated, knowing that this was the key question. No way would Bevan strip his division of CID cover for any length of time. If the inquiry were to go on and on, he might as well hand it over to a Major Inquiry Team now. And if that happened, Faraday would be back behind his desk in the inspectors’ office, fenced in by street assaults, burglaries and serial shoplifters.
‘A week should do it,’ Faraday said lightly. ‘Give me seven working days.’
Bevan, deep in thought, offered a slow nod. The other player in this game was Arnie Pollock. He was in charge of the divisional CID assets and the decision to call in a Major Inquiry Team would be his. Bevan didn’t much like Pollock, but the two men had a grudging respect for each other and in view of the lack of hard evidence Bevan thought that Pollock might settle for staying with a low-profile, paper-based operation.
He looked up at Faraday.
‘Leave it to me to talk to Arnie, then?’
‘Glad to, sir.’
‘Good.’ His hand strayed to the envelope containing the audio cassette. ‘And thanks for this, Joe.’
That afternoon, following a lengthy phone conversation with Pollock, Bevan strengthened Faraday’s investigative hand by allowing him to poach two extra bodies to the Maloney inquiry. One, Duncan Pryde, was a young constable awaiting a posting after a successful CID board, while the other – Alan Moffatt – had just completed a lengthy stint on the force surveillance unit. Pryde and Moffatt would help out until Rick McGivern and Bev Yates returned from leave. With the addition of Cathy Lamb and Dawn Ellis, Faraday now had four detectives at his disposal.
In the CID room, at Faraday’s insistence, Cathy Lamb created a nerve centre for the inquiry by pushing a couple of desks together and lining up the in-trays side by side. Each in-tray was labelled for a different form – Person Descriptive Forms, Message Forms, Action Forms – and the sight of this hastily improvised incident room brought a shake of the head from Paul Winter. Back in the office after hours of fruitless work trying to pin down a couple of guys working a roofing scam, he made no secret of his belief that Faraday had finally gone off his head. Decanting water from the chiller in the corner, he raised his plastic cup in a mock toast.
‘This used to be a CID room once,’ he told Dawn Ellis. ‘Now it’s fucking Toytown.’
Faraday wasn’t around to hear the comment, and in any case he didn’t care. The green light from Bevan had given him a focus, an incentive that he hadn’t had for years. Seven working days to sort out the truth about Stewart Maloney. A week and a bit to become a detective again.
That evening, he and Cathy Lamb drove to Chiswick to interview Ian Hartson. Of
Marenka’s
three survivors, Faraday judged Hartson to be the most vulnerable. If there were to be a way into the mystery of Maloney’s disappearance, then Hartson might supply it.
Hartson lived alone in a spacious first-floor flat in a quiet street off the Chiswick High Road. Faraday had already spoken to him on the phone and he’d had no objection to meeting them that evening. On the doorstep, inviting them in, he was taller and more imposing than Faraday had somehow expected from the figure he’d seen in the hospital bed in Plymouth. He wore jeans and an old cricket sweater and he walked with a slight stoop.
Upstairs, he offered them coffee and fig biscuits, only too happy to satisfy Faraday’s curiosity about his connection with Charlie Oomes. As a television director, he explained that he’d contributed to a series of lavishly funded drama-documentaries exploring the London underworld of the 1950s. His film had traced the rise and fall of Ronnie Dunlop, Charlie Oomes’s father. Hartson’s treatment pulled few punches, portraying the gangster as a wife-beater and a psychopath, and Charlie Oomes had loved it.
Several weeks later, Oomes arranged a meeting with the young film-maker. He wanted someone to work up an idea of his about the 1939 Fastnet Race. Charlie, fascinated by the challenges of ocean racing, had read a number of books about the race and was convinced that it would make a brilliant feature film.
Now, Hartson gestured at a pile of transcript lying on a low table beneath the window.
‘Charlie was right,’ he said. ‘The race was a trailer for the war to come. The Germans entered a couple of boats, and the thing became a three-cornered battle between the Luftwaffe yacht, an American boat and the Brits. Our yacht was called
Bloodhound
. It was a lovely idea and Charlie wanted it developed to first script stage. No way was I going to say no.’
‘Did he pay you?’
‘Of course. There’s a market rate for jobs like this and he paid on the nail. That bought me enough time for the research and a first draft. I started writing just after Christmas.’
He sank back into the chair. His Cowes Week tan was beginning to fade and his eyes kept straying towards the window, as if he yearned to be away from these questions.
‘So what were you doing on the yacht last week?’
‘That was Charlie’s idea. He thought I needed to be hands-on, to do the race for myself. I started crewing back in June, just to get the hang of it.’
‘So you knew Maloney then?’
‘Yes.’
Faraday wanted to know more. Maloney had a reputation for chasing women. Was that something Hartson might be able to shed any light on?
Hartson looked pensive. He had a soft voice, with just a hint of a northern accent. His long body was folded into the armchair, and with his contemplative good looks and his mop of prematurely greying hair, he had exactly the kind of vulnerability that many women might find irresistible.
‘Stu’s just a regular guy’, he said. ‘He’s divorced. He lives alone. Whatever he does is up to him.’
‘You’re telling me he does chase women?’
‘I’m saying he’s pretty normal. I’m sure he has his share of girlfriends.’
‘Anyone in particular?’
‘No.’ He fingered the hem of his pullover. ‘Not that he’s ever said.’
‘You never talked about it?’
‘I can’t remember. No, I don’t think we did.’
‘And when you were with him during Cowes Week, anything unusual then?’
‘Not at all. In fact that first race on the Tuesday he had a stormer. He always took the foredeck. If you get it wrong up front, it can be a nightmare. Stu very rarely got it wrong. That was why Charlie was so pissed off when he blew it on the bike.’
Maloney’s place on the crew had been taken by a nineteen-year-old called Sam O’Connor.
‘Sam was Henry’s stepson,’ Hartson murmured. ‘And he was pretty good, too.’
He explained that Henry Potterne had been the navigator on
Marenka
. Faraday remembered Charlie Oomes talking about him in Plymouth. He’d been swept to his death moments before the yacht capsized. Now, Faraday slipped the best of Maloney’s photographs out of his jacket pocket and handed it across to Hartson.
‘So which one was Henry?’
The sight of
Marenka’s
crew seemed to disturb Hartson. He studied it for a long time. Then the tip of his finger settled on the tall, gaunt-looking figure standing beside Charlie Oomes.
‘That’s him,’ he said. ‘We’d just won the Wednesday race round the cans. Henry’s doing, really. He called it perfectly.’
Faraday retrieved the photo.
‘Did he always wear that red top?’
‘When it was cold, or wet, yes.’
Faraday passed the photo across to Cathy, permitting himself the briefest smile. They had a name now, as well as a face. Henry Potterne.
‘Was he a good navigator?’
‘He was brilliant. That’s Charlie’s talent, really. He only goes for the best people and Henry was the best. Round the cans he was pretty outstanding, like I just said, but on a race like the Fastnet, the nav really earns his keep. The decisions he makes early on can win you the race within the first twenty-four hours. That’s how good Henry was.’
‘You knew him well?’
‘Pretty well, yes. He was really helpful on the research for the film project. In fact I used to go and stay at his place sometimes, just so I could get a decent run at the thing. Charlie used to think he was a genius and in some respects I think he was right.’
‘You sound like you miss him.’
‘You’re right.’ Hartson studied his hands a moment. ‘I do.’
The phrase had a dying fall, deliberate in its pathos, and Faraday began to wonder whether Hartson was always like this, investing memories with a wistfulness that was close to regret. Maybe it went with the territory, he thought. Maybe this was the way that film-making got to you.
Hartson was still talking about Charlie’s star navigator. Henry Potterne had been in his early fifties. He’d learned his navigation in the Navy but for the last couple of years he’d been running a small art gallery in Southsea, specialising in marine pictures. In Hartson’s experience he had an unusual combination of talents. On the one hand – afloat – he could be almost intimidating, sorting out problems with a hard, practical intelligence, whilst on dry land, away from the racing, it would be difficult to meet a more sensitive guy.
‘Too sensitive, really.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes I just had the feeling that life was getting the better of him.’
‘How?’
‘I’m not sure. He had expectations, like we all do. Maybe some things hadn’t worked out.’
‘Like what?’
Hartson shook his head, not willing to go any further. Faraday shot a glance at Cathy, and raised an eyebrow.
‘Was he married?’ she asked.
‘Yes. In fact it was his second marriage. First time I gather it was pretty much a disaster. She left him.’
‘And now?’
‘He married again. Her name’s Ruth. They run the gallery together.’
‘You know Ruth?’
‘Of course. I used to stay with them in Southsea.’
‘Did Henry have any kind of problem there?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Was he a jealous man? And if he was, did he have cause to be?’
Hartson was studying his hands again.
‘Henry was pathologically jealous,’ he said at last. ‘He’d been let down once and he was terrified it would happen again. But no, I don’t think there was anyone else.’
‘These were fears of his own making?’
‘Yes, I think they were.’
There was a long silence. It was getting dark now but Hartson made no attempt to switch on the lights.
Faraday stirred in his chair.
‘How did he get on with Maloney?’
‘OK. They weren’t bosom pals, but they were OK.’
‘No antagonism there? No jealousy?’
‘No.’ Hartson shook his head. ‘Not that I ever heard.’
‘Does Maloney know Ruth at all?’
‘I think they’ve met a couple of times, just socially. Charlie used to throw crew parties sometimes, and wives and girlfriends would turn up. But beyond that?’ – Hartson shrugged – ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Where does Ruth live?’
‘Southsea. I just told you.’
‘Like Maloney, then.’
‘Yes.’
For the first time, Hartson looked Faraday in the eye, refusing to qualify the answer. After a while, Faraday nodded and made a laborious note in his pocketbook. Then he glanced up again.
‘Charlie Oomes told us that the boat never left Cowes before the Fastnet,’ he said lightly. ‘Is that true?’
Now Hartson couldn’t take his eyes off Faraday’s open pocketbook.
‘He told you that?’
‘Yes, he did. He said you were over in Cowes the whole week. So let me put it to you again. Is it true?’
Hartson didn’t lift his head.
‘Why do you ask?’ he said at last.
‘Because it’s material to our inquiries. Just give me a yes or no, Mr Hartson. Did the boat stay in Cowes, like Charlie said?’
‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘It didn’t.’
‘So what happened?’