Turnstone (10 page)

Faraday thanked her and put the phone down, aware of Cathy watching him.

‘Believe me now?’ she muttered.

Back in his office, Faraday glanced through the list of waiting messages. Bevan, his superintendent, had rung three times. When he phoned his secretary, Bibi, she told him the meeting was due to start at two.

‘What meeting?’

‘I’d pop along if I were you,’ she said dryly, ‘and he might tell you.’

Bevan was in his office, looking glumly at a cheese salad sandwich. His wife had put him on a meat-free diet and he’d grown to loathe the sight of lettuce. When Faraday appeared at the door, he pushed the plate to one side and tossed a file of press cuttings across the desk.

‘Trying to find you is ceasing to be a joke,’ he said. ‘Read those.’

Coastlines
was a local freesheet, the brainchild of a young journalist-turned-entrepreneur called Spencer Weatherby. Like every other householder in the city, Faraday got the paper delivered twice weekly, and on a couple of occasions he’d even found time to read it. Weatherby’s bright idea had been to marry an aggressive civil-rights agenda to a peppy, hard-hitting tabloid journalism – and
Coastlines
’ resulting profile had pulled in bucketloads of advertising.

Faraday began to leaf through the cuttings. It was no secret that the police force had been one of Spencer Weatherby’s prime targets, and over the last year he and Bevan had inevitably crossed swords. The headquarters press office, alarmed by the size of
Coastlines
’ readership, was trying to broker a peace between the two men and at their insistence Weatherby had been invited along for an off-the-record background briefing in a bid to get the paper onside. The meeting was scheduled for two o’clock. Faraday’s role was to talk about CID.

‘So what do you think?’

Faraday was still looking through the cuttings. Most of them were pretty innocuous – undergraduate drivel about aggressive policing – but Bevan had ringed some of the more colourful phrases in red Pentel. Not a good sign.

‘It’ll be fine, sir,’ he murmured. ‘These people need us more than we need them.’

‘You really think so, boyo?’ Bevan shook his head. ‘That makes you as naive as I was.’

The meeting got off to a disastrous start. Spencer Weatherby had been called to attend an important client meeting and he’d sent his news editor to stand in. Kate Symonds was an outspoken twenty-four-year-old with an absolute determination to antagonise Bevan just as soon as she could. She handed him her long, belted raincoat, sat down uninvited, and complained that down her street no one had seen a beat officer for months.

‘I thought you guys were into community policing,’ she said, producing a small lined pad and putting it carefully on the table. ‘Round our way, coppers are an endangered species.’

Bevan ignored the remark. Waving Faraday into the chair beside him, he tabled his peace terms. Decent access in return for responsible coverage. Prior briefings on important policy issues. Maybe even a tip or two about major initiatives at street level. And all this as a down-payment on a new partnership.

‘Is any of that beyond us?’ he asked briskly.

‘Us?’ The girl bridled at once at Bevan’s choice of pronoun. ‘We have a duty towards our readers, Mr Bevan. If you’re talking partnership, our partnership’s with them.’

This was classic media-studies tosh, flaunting the precious independence of the fourth estate, and Bevan wasn’t having it. Twice in the last month, front-page splashes in
Coastlines
had headlined alleged police harassment. At best, went the editorial line, our coppers are lazy and inefficient. At worst, they’re no better than the louts and bullies who rule our streets. Unlike Faraday, Bevan had a thin skin as far as the media was concerned.
Coastlines
’ accusations had wounded him deeply and only a last-minute intervention from the press office at HQ had stopped him from taking up the cudgels in earnest. Now, at last, he had a chance to set the record straight.

The girl was talking about journalistic ethics. Bevan leaned forward across the table. He was never more dangerous than when he was smiling.

‘That’s a joke,’ he said softly. ‘And an oxymoron, too.’

‘A what?’

‘An oxymoron. A contradiction in terms. The day you convince me that gutter journalism and ethics go together is the day you start wising up about grammar.’ He reached for the file and began to lay the cuttings out across the table. Then he looked up again. The smile had gone. ‘My people bleed because of your incompetence. I’d just like you to know that.’

The girl was staring at the cuttings. Many of them carried her own byline.

‘I can defend every one of those stories,’ she said hotly.

‘No you can’t, love. And you know why? Because they’re not true. People like you want headlines, not real life, not the stuff we deal with. You want grief and sensationalism. You want widows and orphans. And when they’re not available, you think it’s smart and street-wise to have a pop at us. You’re reckless and lazy and you have absolutely no idea of the damage you do. Here. Let’s start with this one.’

Bevan reached for yesterday’s front-page coverage of the Harrison raid. The headline read ‘In Cold Blood?’ Then he found another about an alleged strip show at the police social club. He’d hit his stride now, citing example after example of facts unchecked, circumstances misunderstood, phone calls never made.

At last, Symonds managed to hit back.

‘You’re saying yesterday’s raid wasn’t a tragedy?’

‘I’m saying it was a mistake.’

‘Shooting someone? With a baby in the room? A
mistake
?’

‘We never like shooting anyone. Even scum like Harrison. Far too much paperwork for a start—’

Bevan broke off, shaking his head, knowing he’d gone too far. Symonds was still staring at him when her mobile phone began to ring. She hesitated, before retrieving it from her bag. Bevan was watching her closely across the table. Faraday had never seen him look so wary before.

Symonds began to nod. Someone was talking very fast at the other end. Finally she glanced up at Bevan.

‘Of course,’ she said on the phone. ‘I’ll be right back.’

She slipped the mobile into her bag and got to her feet. Bevan hadn’t moved.

‘Who was it?’ he asked stonily.

‘The office. The Search and Rescue blokes are pulling bodies out of the water from the Fastnet. A lot of these guys are local. I have to get back.’

‘More widows? More orphans?’ Bevan glanced sideways at Faraday as she made for the door. The smile was back on his face. ‘You think we made a friend there, Joe?’

Ten

By late afternoon, Faraday was back outside the seafront apartment block where Maloney had gone missing. His first visit had ended with checks on neighbours who might have been able to shed light on Maloney’s disappearance, but most of them were either out or unhelpful. Only one lead had seemed remotely worth pursuing. Maloney had been on good terms with the lady in the flat across the hall. Her name was Dorothy Beedon. Every Monday she was in the habit of going to a local bridge club but she was normally back around four.

By now, the full force of the storm had engulfed the south coast. Sheltering beneath the big porch while he fumbled for Emma’s keys, Faraday watched huge waves battering the seafront, livid explosions of foaming brown water that dwarfed the lamp posts on the promenade. From a distance it felt as if the city was under bombardment and he shuddered to think what it must be like out at sea.

At last he found Em’s keys and let himself in. The woman at number eight answered his knock within seconds. Dorothy Beedon was a tall, thin, elderly woman with a slight cast in one eye. She peered at Faraday’s ID, then let him in.

‘I thought you were the builder,’ she said, gesturing helplessly at the window.

They were standing in the big front room. A semicircle of buckets and saucepans in the bay window were carefully positioned beneath a line of steady drips through the ceiling. More rain bubbled through the seals on the windows themselves.

‘It’s been like this for an hour. You’d think he’d be here by now, wouldn’t you?’

Faraday couldn’t take his eyes off the view. The boiling sea had turned a sinister shade of yellow-brown and at last he understood a phrase he’d treasured from his childhood reading.

‘Evil weather,’ he murmured, turning back into the room.

He accepted the offer of an armchair and explained that he was making some inquiries about Mrs Beedon’s neighbour, Stewart Maloney. He understood that the two of them were friends.

‘Am I right?’

‘You are.’ She offered him a vigorous nod then glanced towards the window. ‘My goodness!’

A length of bladderwrack, seaweed the colour of iodine, had briefly flattened itself against the glass, blown hundreds of metres across the common. They both gazed at it.

At length, Mrs Beedon struggled to her feet.

‘He’s broken his arm, you know. Would you like some biscuits?’

She left the room without waiting for an answer and returned with an open packet of custard creams. Young Stewart had popped in first thing Friday to borrow some milk. That’s when she’d seen the way they’d strapped him up.

‘He broke it here. Not nice.’ She touched her cardigan lightly with one gnarled finger, high up on her right arm.

‘Was he OK?’

‘Not at all. Would you be?’

‘I meant in himself. Apart from the arm.’

Mrs Beedon went across to the window bay, examining the buckets one by one. Thinking she hadn’t understood the question, Faraday tried to rephrase it, but he could have saved himself the breath.

‘How was little Em’s birthday?’ Mrs Beedon was back in her chair. ‘They went to London, didn’t they?’

‘No, they didn’t,’ Faraday said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

He explained briefly about Maloney’s disappearance. Something had happened to call him away from the flat across the hall. Had Mrs Beedon seen him after he’d borrowed the milk?

‘Not to talk to, no.’

‘But?’

‘I did see him go out. Friday afternoon it must have been. After the other chap had popped in.’

‘What other chap?’

‘Well now …’ She bent her head, frowning with the effort of recollection. ‘An older chap I think he was, thinnish. He came on Friday afternoon, arrived in a taxi.’ She nodded towards the bay window. ‘It’s the view, Inspector. I sit here most days. Not much gets by me.’

‘And this man? Had you seen him before?’

‘Never.’

‘What time would this have been?’

She frowned, looking at her watch.

‘The big P&O ferry had just gone out. Say half past three.’

Faraday asked her how long the stranger had stayed. She thought ten minutes, no more.

‘And Mr Maloney was in?’

‘Oh yes, definitely.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Well, this other chap couldn’t have got in otherwise, whoever he was. Not without Stewart. But there was the shouting, too.’ She nodded, disturbed by the memory. ‘They were having an argument, a real set-to.’ She bent towards him, her knuckles white on the armrests of the chair. ‘I was quite worried, to tell you the truth.’

‘What were they saying?’

‘I don’t know. But they were both … you know … pretty angry.’

‘Was there any other noise? Bumps? Crashes?’

‘Fighting, you mean?’ She shook her head. ‘No, thank goodness.’

‘And you saw this person leave?’

‘Yes, and this time he was carrying something big, wrapped in newspaper.’ Her hands sketched an oblong in the air. ‘He didn’t take a taxi this time. He just walked off.’

Faraday leaned forward in the big armchair. The shape she’d just made would have fitted the empty space on Maloney’s wall. Almost exactly.

‘This man,’ Faraday said, ‘would you recognise him again?’

‘Maybe …’ She hesitated. ‘But the eyes aren’t as good as they were.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘Outdoor clothes, you know, one of those anorak things. Red it was, and a nice red, too …’

Faraday stopped writing for a moment. Sandra Maloney’s boyfriend wore a red anorak. He’d seen it in the photograph on the piano. He was tall, too, and on the thin side. He glanced across at Mrs Beedon. She was saying that Maloney had left shortly afterwards. In another taxi.

‘Can you remember the firm?’

‘No, I’m afraid I can’t.’

The two of them looked at each other for a moment then a brief flash of white drew Faraday’s gaze to the window. A gull, he thought, desperately trying to spill air and regain some kind of control before the storm tossed it over the rooftops. The touch of the old woman’s hand on his arm made him jump. She was peering at him in the gloom.

‘Tell me something.’ She was looking anxious again. ‘Do you think the builders really will come?’

Faraday let himself into Maloney’s flat with Emma’s key. Ignoring the clutter in the sitting room, he went straight to the bedroom at the back. Stored computer files on a PC had rapidly become one of the CID’s first ports of call in situations like these and normally the search teams downloaded everything on to floppy discs for later analysis. Faraday could organise this if he felt it necessary, but a quick trawl might save him precious man-hours later. Settling himself on the end of the bed, he fired up the computer. Within minutes, he scented success.

Maloney had stored a correspondence file tagged ‘Emmy’ on his hard disc. There were three letters, all of them addressed to one of the city’s biggest legal firms. The first letter was by far the longest and told Faraday everything he wanted to know.

According to Maloney, his ex-wife had started a new relationship. Her partner’s name was Patrick McIlvenny. He was Canadian by birth and taught at a local comprehensive. His own marriage had foundered a couple of years ago and now he wanted to go home. Home was Vancouver. He was determined to take Sandra with him. And Sandra was equally determined to bring Emma, Maloney’s only daughter.

The letter bristled with righteous anger. ‘There’s absolutely no possibility,’ Maloney had written in the final paragraph, ‘that I will ever let this happen – and they both know it. Legally, I need to know that I can stop them. If this proves impossible, there have to be other ways.’

Other ways?

Faraday bent to the box of copier paper on the floor and fed a sheet into the printer beside it. If the threat was this explicit in a letter to a solicitor, then God knows what Maloney must have told his ex-wife. No way do you get between me and my daughter. No way do you crate your belongings, flog the house and steal off to Heathrow to start your new life. Not with Em. Not with my precious daughter. No way. Not now. Not ever.

And Sandra? Or – more importantly – Patrick McIlvenny? What might they have done? Say their plans were cast in concrete? Say they’d even got a deadline, a leaving date, a buyer for the house? What would you do about a man as intransigent as Stewart Maloney? Might you try sweet reason? Might you try and buy him off? And if that failed, and you were that desperate, might you just phone for a cab? And come round to sort the issue out?

Faraday retrieved the letter from the printer and walked through to the front room. The presence of the passport application form was much clearer now, Maloney’s bid to regain some control in this situation. With a new passport, Em could exercise an element of choice. Maloney could even keep the passport himself, making it impossible for her to leave the country.

Faraday sifted carefully through the correspondence on the table, sorting out the uncompleted form and putting it on one side. There comes a moment in every investigation when instinct begins to harden into conviction and he knew that this was it. Beyond any reasonable doubt he’d established a motive. Where that motive might lead was still largely guesswork, but at least it was a start.

By the window, he paused, listening to the howling wind, thinking of Maloney again. There were holes in this theory of his and one of them had to do with Sandra, Maloney’s ex-wife. If her new lover was really responsible for Maloney’s disappearance, then how come she’d volunteered the keys to this flat so willingly?

Faraday shook his head, not knowing the answer, and then picked up the passport form. Next stop would be another visit to Sandra Maloney and the chance to put his suppositions to the test of a second interview. Faraday glanced at his watch, planning the evening ahead, relieved that he wouldn’t have to go home. He hadn’t trodden this path for years, and with a sudden rush of pleasure, he realised that he was enjoying it.

Paul Winter was contemplating the prospects for the pub quiz when Morry Templeman phoned. The quiz took place on the second Monday of every month and August was especially good because so many of the better teams would be away on holiday. For Joan, in particular, the pub quiz had become the mainstay of her social diary.

The phone was in the hall.

‘Paul? You got a pen there?’

Winter recognised Morry’s thin wheeze at once. He reached for a Biro and closed the lounge door with his foot.

‘Go,’ he said.

Templeman gave him an address and a phone number in Port Solent. It was nearly dark outside, terrible weather for August, and Winter had to turn on the table lamp to read it all back.

‘So who’s that, then?’ Winter was still peering at the address.

‘Juanita. Her second name’s Perez. And listen, Paul.’

‘What?’

‘It didn’t come from me.’

By the time Faraday got to North End, Sandra Maloney was preparing supper. Faraday offered to come back later but she said she wouldn’t hear of it.

‘I’m sure it won’t take long.’ She slipped the lettuce back into the fridge. ‘Is there any news?’

Faraday was watching Emma laying three places at the table at the far end of the kitchen-diner. The girl darted to and fro with a deftness of movement that J-J had never quite managed to master, even now.

‘I’m afraid not,’ Faraday said at last. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to do this later?’

Sandra shook her head and led the way through to the living room. Faraday shut the door behind them. The framed photo was still on the piano, the face beneath the enormous rucksack as stony-eyed and long-suffering as ever.

‘About this new relationship of yours …’ Faraday began.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Faraday caught the chill in her voice. There was surprise there, certainly, but defiance as well. What had Sandra Maloney’s private life got to do with the likes of Faraday?

Faraday settled himself in the high-backed armchair by the window. He wanted to know about Sandra’s plans to move to Canada.

‘I don’t have any.’

‘That’s not the way I heard it.’ He glanced round the big sitting room with its shadowed alcoves and brimming bookcases. ‘Is this place on the market by any chance?’

‘No.’

‘You’re not planning to sell up?’

‘No.’

‘Your partner, Patrick, is he—?’

‘Friend, not partner.’

‘Really?’

Faraday let the question settle between them. Two decades inside J-J’s head had given him a very special appreciation of body language. In situations like these, he always looked for the tell-tale signs of anxiety: tiny facial movements, especially around the mouth; a reluctance to risk full eye contact; trouble keeping the hands still. Clues like these often flagged the path to a successful result but so far, to his surprise, Sandra Maloney had evidenced nothing more revealing than anger.

She was perched on the edge of the Victorian chaise longue, her hands clasped together, her lips pursed. At length, she broke the silence.

‘For the record, Mr Faraday, Patrick and I are extremely good friends. I don’t know where you got hold of all this nonsense about me moving to Canada. If he hadn’t disappeared, I’d put money on the fact that you’ve been talking to Stewart. That’s the kind of thing he’d believe.’

‘You’re saying it’s not true?’

‘Yes, and it never has been true, either. Stewart’s paranoic. He jumps to conclusions all the time.’

‘But your friend
is
Canadian?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re telling me he doesn’t want to go back to Vancouver?’

Mention of Vancouver brought colour to Sandra’s face.

‘He does. That’s true. He doesn’t much like it here. And sometimes I don’t blame him.’

‘But you don’t want to go with him?’

‘What I want doesn’t matter. I can’t and that’s that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because of Em, of course. She loves her home. She’s settled at school. All her friends are here. And then there’s her dad. That’s the irony, Mr Faraday, that’s what poor, dear, deluded Stewart never quite understands. His best guarantee as far as Em is concerned is the girl herself. Do I
look
the kind of mother that would just pack her up and haul her away?’