Turnstone (11 page)

‘But otherwise you’d have done it?’ Faraday said. ‘Is that fair?’

‘Done what?’

‘Gone to Canada. With Patrick.’

Faraday’s gaze strayed to the picture on the piano. Sandra was watching him carefully.

‘I might,’ she conceded.

‘And he knows that? Patrick?’

‘We’ve talked about it.’

‘And he wants you to go?’

‘Yes, he does. But men are like that, aren’t they? Want, want, want. Need, need, need. Not a thought for anyone else, let alone Em.’

Faraday nodded, and produced a battered notebook. The interview was back where he wanted it. Sandra Maloney, for all her protestations, was the meat in the sandwich – not simply between two men, but between two men and her daughter. He hadn’t been wrong after all.

‘Do you happen to know where Patrick was on Friday afternoon?’

Sandra stared at him.

‘For God’s sake—’ she began.

‘It’s a serious question, Mrs Maloney. You’d be well advised to answer it.’

There was a long silence while Sandra studied her hands. Faraday could sense her hauling the rope of days back through her memory. At last, she looked up. The defiance was back in her eyes again.

‘He was here,’ she said. ‘With me.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘No. We were alone.’

‘So there’s no one else to … ah … corroborate that fact?’

Faraday’s pen hovered over the notebook. In the depths of the house, he could hear a clock chiming. Finally Sandra shook her head.

‘Nobody,’ she said.

‘And you were both here all afternoon?’

‘Yes, we had a bit of lunch. Patrick had brought a rather good bottle of wine.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘You really want to know?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘We went to bed. It’s holiday time. The weather was miserable. Em was out for the afternoon. Oh, for God’s sake, why do I have to justify myself? What are you after, Mr Faraday? The details?’

‘He never left the house, then?’

‘Not that I noticed.’

‘You’re absolutely certain about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘And has he ever been to your ex-husband’s flat?’

‘Never. In fact I don’t think they’ve even met.’

‘Never?’

There was another long silence. Then came the sound of a key in a door and Sandra was on her feet in an instant, a suddenly vivid smile on her face.

‘Ask him yourself,’ she said. ‘He’s just come in.’

Before Faraday could get to his feet, she was out of the room. Faraday heard the low murmur of voices in the hall, then the man on the footpath was standing in the open doorway. He was an inch or two over six feet. His scarlet anorak was dripping from the rain and what was left of his hair was plastered over his scalp. He ignored Faraday’s outstretched hand.

‘Can I help you?’

Faraday was still cursing himself for not being quicker into the hall. Five seconds was time enough to establish an alibi, especially if you were guilty.

McIlvenny was still waiting for an answer. Faraday explained briefly about Maloney, and about Emma’s visit to the police station. He was here to help her find her father.

‘Would you have any objection if I asked you for your fingerprints?’ Faraday inquired.

McIlvenny stared at him for a long moment.

‘For what purpose?’ he said at last.

‘Elimination.’

‘Elimination from what?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you at this point in time. If I could, it might be easier for all of us.’ He paused. ‘I understand you’re thinking of going back to Canada.’

McIlvenny glanced at Sandra and then nodded. Trying to teach anything in this country had become a joke, especially in schools as appalling as Portsmouth’s, and the higher you got in the pecking order, the more you realised that the problems were probably insoluble.

Faraday recognised the veiled threat.

‘Where do you teach?’

McIlvenny named one of the big comprehensives. Then, for the first time, he permitted himself the ghost of a smile.

‘At the moment I’m acting headmaster,’ he said bleakly, ‘until they find some other poor sap.’

Before he left them to their supper, Faraday took Sandra aside and told her that he’d appreciate a word with her daughter.

‘Now?’

‘Yes, please.’

Sandra looked him in the eye, wanting to say no, wanting him to leave, then shrugged, too weary to argue. Emma was upstairs in her bedroom. Faraday could ask her whatever he liked, as long as Sandra was there.

‘No problem, Mrs Maloney.’

Sandra led the way upstairs. Emma was sitting on her bed, watching television with the sound down. Faraday wondered whether she’d been at the top of the stairs, trying to eavesdrop.

Sandra explained about Faraday being a policeman.

‘Detective, Emma,’ Faraday murmured. ‘Sounds more glamorous.’

The girl looked up at him. She was still a child, half frightened, half fascinated. Faraday reversed a chair and sat down, his chin on his folded arms.

‘Just the one little question, Emma. Your dad’s flat, those pictures on his wall in the front room. You know the ones I’m talking about?’

Emma nodded. The faint, whispery voice went with the freckles and the brace on her front teeth.

‘You mean the photos?’

‘Yes. Just imagine you’re standing there now, looking out towards the window. OK?’ Emma glanced at her mother, wide-eyed at this new game, then nodded again. ‘Good. Now look just a bit to your left. There’s a picture at the end of the row of photos, a bit bigger than the rest. Got it?’

Emma frowned with concentration, then began to giggle. Faraday was smiling, too.

‘Know the picture I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s the picture of?’

There was a long silence. Emma was still giggling. Then Sandra broke in, her patience exhausted.

‘Just tell him, Em. Tell him what it is.’

‘It’s a lady.’

‘A photograph?’ Faraday asked. ‘Like the rest?’

‘No, a picture, a painting, something someone’s done.’

‘And what’s it like? What’s the lady doing?’

‘She’s sitting on a sofa thing. More lying down, really.’

‘Is that all? Is that why you were giggling?’

‘No, it’s just that …’ Her eyes went to her mother again. ‘The lady hasn’t got anything on.’

‘Nothing at all? You mean she’s naked?’

‘Yes.’

Faraday nodded, letting the silence stretch and stretch. He felt Sandra stiffening beside him. Just one more question, he thought. Then we’re through.

‘This lady, Emma’ – he gestured up at Sandra – ‘is she your mummy?’

The child looked briefly startled at the suggestion, then shook her head vigorously.

‘Oh, no, she’s different … all over.’

There was a long silence, then Sandra manoeuvred Faraday out on to the landing and closed the bedroom door behind her. McIlvenny was at the foot of the stairs, waiting for them both to come down.

‘I hope you’ve got a good reason for all these questions,’ Sandra said icily, ‘because you’re sure as hell going to need one.’

Eleven

Faraday found the envelope on his desk when he got back to the station. The night shift had just booked on and the traffic crews were milling around the coffee machine along the corridor. Inside the envelope was a bunch of photographs secured with an elastic band. The top one showed a group of men clambering aboard a yacht, and it took Faraday a second or two to realise that these were the shots from Maloney’s roll of film.

Cathy was next door in the CID room, bent to the phone. She gestured for him to come over, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.

‘Checking on Pete again,’ she muttered.

Faraday squeezed her shoulder and returned to his office, settling down to sort through the photos. They all seemed to feature the same yacht. The weather looked pretty similar throughout, so Faraday assumed that they must have been snapped on the Tuesday or Wednesday of Cowes Week. The name of the yacht –
Marenka
– was black-lettered on the crew’s scarlet sweatshirts and, judging by the expressions on these men’s faces, the day’s racing must have gone well.

Towards the bottom of the pile, Faraday came across a shot that somebody else must have taken.
Marenka
was back on the pontoon amongst all the other yachts and the crew were crowded together in the cockpit for a victory pose. There were six of them in all, a mix of ages, two of them young, four of them older. With the exception of the man in the very middle of the group, they were all punching the air, Maloney’s fist raised highest of all.

Faraday lingered for a moment on the three-day growth of beard that was rapidly becoming familiar, then he returned to the man in the middle. He was heavily built. He had a big, meaty face, and the same red sweatshirt and matching shorts, but unlike everyone else his head was turned to the left, his gaze directed elsewhere. One arm was up, his middle finger raised in a derisive salute, and the expression on his face was close to a snarl.

Trying to imagine the wider picture, Faraday half closed his eyes.
Marenka
had obviously won but for this man, at least, victory hadn’t been enough. He’d spotted the opposition. And he wasn’t going to let the moment pass. Something the girl in the Fastnet office had said came back to Faraday. ‘They don’t come more competitive than
Marenka
,’ she’d told him. And here was the proof.

Cathy appeared at the open door, zipping up her anorak. When Faraday raised an inquiring eyebrow, she shook her head.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘No one’s heard a peep since last night.’

‘Maybe the radio’s out.’

‘That’s what they said.’

Faraday nodded, trying to think of something else to say, some other crumb of comfort, but Cathy was gone already, the clack-clack of her footsteps fading away down the corridor.

Reaching for the phone directory, Faraday found the number for Aqua Cabs and then dialled it. When he finally got through to the shift manager he asked what kind of records they kept.

‘What is this?’

‘Missing-person inquiry.’

The woman grunted then explained that a tally of all calls and fares were kept on hard disc for a week. Then wiped. Faraday inquired whether she’d got a pen handy. When she asked why, he gave her Maloney’s name, the address on the seafront and last Friday’s date.

‘I’m looking for a pick-up around four in the afternoon,’ he said, ‘Give or take.’

He heard the snort of laughter at the other end, then she was back on the phone.

‘We’re turning over more than a thousand calls a day at the moment,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re not in a hurry.’

Back home by ten, Faraday found a scribbled note from J-J explaining that he’d gone to stay with a friend for the night. A couple of panes of glass in the greenhouse had been smashed by flying debris during the day, but he’d done his best to block the holes with sheets of plywood. He’d signed the note with a big loopy ‘J’ and added a pair of seagull wings underneath, and the gesture brought a smile to Faraday’s face. It was the first sign of affection from the boy since his return from France.

Minutes later, standing in the lounge listening to the storm blowing itself out, Faraday answered the phone. It was Cathy. She was laughing. She’d just had a call from the Search and Rescue people telling her that
Tootsie’s
crew had been picked up by helicopter and flown to hospital in Plymouth. Pete was suffering from exposure but otherwise appeared to be OK. First thing tomorrow, she wanted to drive down to collect him.

‘No problem,’ Faraday said at once. ‘Do it.’

‘There’s something else, too.’

She told him about another message she’d taken earlier from the race office at Cowes. The crew of a yacht called
Marenka
had also been hauled out of the water, and the girl at the Cowes office thought Faraday might like to know.

‘So what’s with this
Marenka?
Cathy inquired.

Faraday muttered something about the misper, Maloney.

‘You’re really still interested?’

‘Very much so.’

‘How come?’

Faraday began to explain about the evening’s developments, then broke off. If any bunch of guys could offer an intimate view of Stewart Maloney, then it would surely be
Marenka’s
crew. You could see it in their faces in the photographs. These guys were tight with each other. They’d sailed together, won together, celebrated together, got drunk together. There’d be few secrets on a boat like that.

‘When are you leaving?’ Faraday asked.

‘First light. Say five.’

‘Pick me up, then. I’m coming too.’

‘What about the office?’

Faraday was still thinking about Maloney’s photographs.

‘Office?’ he said blankly.

Next morning, Cathy and Faraday drove down to the hospital in Plymouth. The sky had cleared after the passage of the storm, leaving a clean, rain-washed blue, dotted with cotton-wool clouds. There were trees blown down in Dorset, and structural damage to houses around Exeter. Derriford Hospital was on the northern fringes of Plymouth. Staff at the reception desk directed them to the third floor.

Faraday accompanied Cathy along the corridor from the lift. Pete Lamb occupied a bed in a ward at the end. A glass partition screened the ward and Cathy paused to rearrange the flowers she’d bought from the shop downstairs. Faraday had expressed surprise at Pete’s fondness for flowers but Cathy, grinning, had told him not to be so naive. The bunch of blue iris was really for her.

Faraday saw the woman first. She was sitting at Pete’s bedside, stroking his hand. She was young, with a knot of blonde hair pinned up at the back. She was wearing jeans and a blue scoop-necked T-shirt and when she reached out to get something from the cabinet on the far side of the bed, Pete leaned forward, nuzzling her breasts. A moment later, he caught sight of his wife.

Cathy’s face had frozen. She stared at Pete a moment longer through the glass then moved to go into the ward. Faraday restrained her. The more she struggled, the more tightly he gripped her arm.

‘Don’t,’ he told her. ‘Not here, anyway.’

‘You’re fucking joking.’

‘I’m not.’

‘He’s my husband.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Doesn’t
matter
?’

Cathy was staring at him. The sister behind the nursing station was getting to her feet. Faraday gestured for her to follow them both down the corridor. Back beside the lift, he asked where he could find the crew of a boat called
Marenka
.

The sister was still looking at Cathy.

‘Are you OK, dear?’

Cathy couldn’t take her eyes off the ward by the nursing station. Finally she tipped her head back and took a deep breath.

‘No,’ she said, ‘but I will be.’

The survivors from
Marenka
occupied a ward on the floor below, and to Faraday’s surprise there were just three of them. Faraday looked at Cathy, trying to judge how close she was to taking the lift back upstairs. She was very pale and the tension showed in the tightness of the skin around her lips.

‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘We’ll do this together.’

Faraday recognised the big, bulky figure in the corner bed at once. He’d been the one in the photo giving the finger to some rival or other. Now he was sitting up with a bowl of soup and the remains of a crusty roll. His jaw was swollen on one side and he had a livid bruise beneath his left eye. According to the chart hanging on the foot of the bed, his name was Charlie Oomes.

Derek Bissett, in the next bed, was a couple of years older, a smaller, slighter man. His eyes were closed, the blankets heaped up around him. Across the ward was the other survivor, Ian Hartson. He looked younger than the other two but Faraday was conscious at once of a wariness in his expression. Something about the eyes that followed them as they walked across the ward to talk to Charlie Oomes. Something this man was trying to forget.

No wonder.

Charlie Oomes turned out to be
Marenka’s
owner/skipper, a gruff south Londoner with a florid complexion, huge, meaty hands and little time for small talk. Faraday and Cathy introduced themselves and then drew up seats beside his bed.

‘What happened?’

Oomes studied them both for a moment with his tiny, bloodshot eyes and then told them the story of the yacht’s final hours. How she’d pushed out into the Celtic Sea ahead of every other Class III boat. How she’d had to run before the storm on a tiny triangle of trisail, dragging a sea anchor to prevent a fatal broach. How he and Henry had taken turns at the tiller, half an hour on, half an hour off. And how a rogue wave had finally overwhelmed their tiny craft, roaring out of the darkness, pitch-poling
Marenka
, flooding the cabin, and finally breaking her up.

Oomes brushed crumbs from his borrowed pyjama top.

‘Fucked,’ he said, ‘totally shafted. We didn’t even have time to send a Mayday.’

‘So how did they find you?’

‘We had an EPIRB, an emergency radio beacon. We grabbed it off the back before we took to the life raft. Bastard thing didn’t work at first. Derek had to fix it.’

He gestured at the inert figure huddled beneath the blankets and Faraday found himself nodding in sympathy. After a story like that he felt as if he’d been there.

‘Who was Henry?’

‘Our nav. Brilliant bloke. Total one-off.’

‘And what happened to him?’

‘Dead. Drowned.’

Henry Potterne, the navigator, had disappeared moments before the capsize. Sam, his nineteen-year old stepson, had stayed aboard to try and get a line around the sixth member of the crew, a university student, David Kellard. The last Charlie had heard from the life raft was a yell from young David as the storm swept them away. Turned out the lad had a terrible fear of drowning. Poor sod.

Faraday stole a glance at Cathy. She was miles away, staring blankly out towards the corridor. Another capsize, Faraday thought. Another little death.

‘So what’s with you lot? What are you after?’ It was Oomes’s turn to ask the questions.

Faraday explained about Stewart Maloney. He, too, had disappeared, though obviously not at sea. When did Oomes last see him?

Oomes frowned, picking at the last of the crumbs. Stu had broken his arm falling off that sodding bike of his. Felt like a year ago. Tuesday? Wednesday? Bastard must have been psychic, must have known the shit we’d be getting ourselves into.

‘So where were you all on Friday?’

Oomes had started again on the soup, eyeing Faraday over the lip of the bowl.

‘On the island. We rent a place at Cowes. Costs me a fortune.’

‘And you were there all week?’

‘Of course. That’s what Cowes is about. We don’t go there to tart about. We go there to race.’

‘What about the rest of the year?’

‘What about it?’

‘Where do you keep the boat?’

‘Port Solent.’

Faraday nodded, thinking at once about Nelly Tseng. Men like Charlie Oomes were exactly the kind of clients she wanted to attract. Probably a self-made businessman. Almost definitely wealthy.

‘You’ve got a house there?’

‘Bet your life. And a waterside mooring.’

Faraday made a note of the Port Solent address, then looked at Oomes again. Had Maloney turned up on the island after the injury? Had he come over to wish them good luck on Friday night or Saturday morning? Had he phoned or sent a card? Had Charlie or any of the rest of them had
any
contact with him?

Charlie shook his head. Maloney had been completely irresponsible, falling off the bike. Riding with a couple of pints inside him was asking for trouble when the man barely drank. He was bloody lucky it hadn’t been more serious. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would have walked.

‘Where was he going?’

‘Back to the house, the place we’d rented.’

‘How far was that?’

‘About a mile. He was posing. He’s always posing. Leather strides and all that art-school garbage. Guy lives on another planet. Any woman with half a brain would walk away.’

Faraday glanced at Cathy. Her eyes were closed now. She looked exhausted.

‘I’m not with you, Mr Oomes,’ Faraday murmured. ‘What are you telling me here?’

‘Telling you?’

‘About Maloney.’

‘Stu?’ He spooned up the last of the soup, wiped his mouth with the corner of the sheet, and shrugged.

‘Nothing, really. We all have our little problems, don’t we?’

In the end, Winter decided against phoning. The phone was too distant, too remote. It took nothing to mumble an excuse and just hang up. No, much better to pop along in person. That way, he’d get his foot in her door. Nice thought.

The address from Morry took him to the big horseshoe of apartments that looked west across the Port Solent yacht basin. A van from a glazing company was double-parked outside the main entrance and he stood waiting in the sunshine while a couple of workmen manoeuvred a big glass panel in through the door.

Flat fifty-seven had a security peep at eye level but Winter kept his head down when his second ring finally stirred a response.

‘Who is it?’ a woman’s voice called.

‘Management, love.’