Turnstone (27 page)

‘That’s right,’ Hartson said. ‘I think we all knew we were in the shit. Then we lost Henry.’

‘How?’

‘He was hanging over the stern, trying to sort out a problem with the rudder blade. He wasn’t wearing a safety harness and he wasn’t roped on. One minute he was there, the next he’d gone. Thinking about it now, I wonder whether he’d just had enough.’

‘You think he went over on purpose?’

‘I think he may have done. Like I said, he’d been drinking all day. I don’t think he could cope any more.’

‘Could you see him in the water?’

‘No chance. We were surfing by then, the wind behind us, huge waves.’

‘What did Charlie say?’

‘Nothing at first.’

‘Then what?’

‘He went crazy again. Not just that, he—’ He broke off, studying his hands.

‘He what?’

‘Nothing, really.’

‘Tell me. Tell me what he did.’

There was a long silence.

‘Will Ruth get to know about all this?’

‘No,’ Faraday lied, ‘she won’t.’

‘OK.’ Hartson didn’t look up. ‘Charlie threw Sam off the boat.’

‘What?’

‘He just did it. I was there in the cockpit, as close to him as I am to you.’

‘He did it deliberately?’

‘Yes.’

Faraday leaned forward.

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Positive. Charlie had simply had enough. The body and everything. The fact that it was Maloney. The fact that Henry had lied. The fact that Sam had tried to set us on fire. He was through with it. He just picked him up and chucked him over. I couldn’t believe it.’

‘Did anyone try and help? Did you turn the boat round?’

‘It was blowing a gale. It was as much as we could do to keep the thing in one piece.’

‘Who was on the tiller?’

‘Derek, still. He was keeping out of it as much as possible. I don’t think he said a single word that night.’

‘And David Kellard?’

‘In shock. He was mates with Sam. He couldn’t believe it either.’

The weather had gone from bad to worse. In those conditions, said Hartson, you think of nothing but the next wave. It was obvious by now that they ought to have put in to Falmouth or Penzance but they were out beyond the Scillys and there was no chance of turning round. The wind was still blasting out of the southeast. Beam-on to those seas, and you were in serious danger of capsizing.

‘So you had no choice?’

‘None. We just had to run before the storm. You get to the stage where you’ve got past being frightened. You’re just cold and numb and hanging on for dear life. You know you’re going to die. It’s inevitable. It’s just a question of when.’

Around half past three in the morning, the eye of the storm had passed directly over the yacht. Briefly, the wind had dropped. Then it picked up again, more violent than ever, blasting out of the north-west. For a while, they’d run south-east. Then Charlie had decided to scuttle the yacht.

‘You mean sink it? Deliberately?’

Hartson nodded.

‘He was quite calm about it. There wasn’t any drama. He just went round each of us, telling us the way it would be. I remember him having to shout to make himself heard. First we’d get the life raft ready, and the EPIRB, and then he’d put an axe through the inside of the hull up towards the bow. There was no argument. We just did it.’

‘And it worked?’

‘Perfectly. The cabin began to fill with water. We chose our moment. And then stepped into the raft.’

‘All of you?’

‘No.’

‘Where was Kellard?’

Another silence. Hartson’s face was like a mask now, his eyes pouched in the swollen flesh.

‘He got snagged in a rope,’ he said softly.

‘On the yacht?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anyone help him?’

‘We couldn’t.’

‘Couldn’t?’

‘We were in the raft.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I don’t know. We never saw him again.’

‘You mean he drowned.’

‘Yes.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘He must have done.’

The three of them – Charlie, Derek and Hartson – had spent the night bailing for their lives. Only by late morning would Charlie let Derek trigger the EPIRB. By then, they were miles from
Marenka’s
last sighting. Not that they had a clue exactly where they were when she went down.

Faraday stared at the ceiling. This was the way Hartson had described events on the laptop. The body had been disposed of. The yacht, the scene of crime, was somewhere at the bottom of the Irish Sea. One witness had gone down with
Marenka
while another had been lost in the wastes of the English Channel. The near-perfect murder.

Faraday reached for the light. The interview room was suddenly bathed in neon.

‘Why the stuff on the laptop?’

‘Because I needed an insurance policy. I was a witness too, and I’ve seen what Charlie can do. I’ve made a film about his father, for God’s sake. If push came to shove, if Charlie thought I was about to do something silly, then I’d be in deep shit. I was going to send one copy to him. The other would go to my solicitor. If anything happened to me, he had instructions to read it.’

Faraday was back in his car at Bembridge, watching Oomes park the Mercedes and storm on to the houseboat.

‘And Charlie thought you
had
done something silly?’

‘Yes. Apparently you had a map of mine, a chart of the Fastnet. You brought it along to his office. He thought I’d given it to you. He thought I’d been talking.’

Faraday remembered the second time that he and Cathy had interviewed Charlie Oomes. Hartson was right. Faraday had used the map from Hartson’s film script to try and pin Charlie down.

‘But I thought you’d gone abroad.’

‘That was the plan. That’s what we’d agreed. But then Charlie realised I hadn’t got a passport. We carry them on every long race, just in case. They’d all gone down with the yacht.’

‘So how did he know you were at Bembridge?’

‘He’d put two and two together about me and Ruth. He’d been watching me over the last couple of months. He thought she was up to something and he knew it would never have been with Stu. Plus he also knew she had the houseboat because he’d been aboard a couple of times when she and Henry were staying there and he was visiting his mum at the nursing home. Charlie isn’t stupid. When needs must, he knows where to look.’

Faraday made a final note, then got to his feet and stretched. His neck was hurting badly now and he wondered whether there were any more paracetamol in the custody sergeant’s drawer. Hartson was slumped in the chair, gazing into nowhere.

There was a quiet whirr from the tape machine. Faraday reached down and turned it off.

‘Tell me something,’ he said softly. ‘Who do you think killed Stewart Maloney?’

Hartson answered without hesitation.

‘Henry Potterne,’ he said.

‘And who’s equally guilty?’

‘Me.’ He closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘I just want to know why.’

At Pollock’s insistence, Winter and Dawn Ellis interviewed Charlie Oomes. The assault charge had given Faraday too personal a stake in confronting Oomes, and a warm note of appreciation from Harry Wayte had given Pollock every confidence in Winter’s abilities.

Faraday was therefore back in the room next door, the interview relayed to him through speakers, and he knew at once that Oomes was never, for a second, going to admit anything.

‘Hartson made it up,’ he grunted. ‘That’s what the guy does for a living. He makes up all kinds of crap. Good money in it, too. I don’t blame him.’

Faraday could visualise the scene: Winter and Ellis on one side of the table, Oomes and his brief on the other. At Oomes’s insistence, they’d had to delay the interview until his solicitor got down from London. Eleven o’clock at night was late to be starting a conversation like this.

Winter was at his most persuasive, and listening to him Faraday realised that these two men came out of the same mould. They were used to taking the shortest cuts. They had absolutely no fear of turning the truth on its head and pretending that black was white.

‘You’re a winner, mate. Winning’s what counts.’

‘Too fucking right.’

‘So the race mattered. Come what may.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘So when laughing boy turned up with a story about some tart he’d shafted, that Friday night, you weren’t much bothered. Isn’t that right?’

Next door, Faraday tried to people the silence that followed. How was Oomes reacting? Shock? Disbelief? Outright denial?

‘I know where you’re coming from, son,’ Oomes said at length, ‘and you’re talking bollocks.’

‘How did he put it? Was he pissed? Did he look guilty? Did he say sorry? Did
anyone
mention the police at all?’

‘The who?’ Oomes was winding him up now.

‘The police. The Old Bill. Us.’

‘Ah. You lot.’

Winter changed tack.

‘Conspiracy to murder isn’t a parking offence,’ he began. ‘You could make things a lot easier for yourself.’

‘I could?’

‘Too right. Your buddy, Bissett, he’s ex-CID, isn’t he?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then he’d have known the form, what to avoid, how to get this thing done properly. He might have advised you. Talked about forensic. Talked about getting everything squared away. He might have pushed you into it. Say that’s true. Say that’s the way it really happened. That might put a different slant on your involvement. You wanted to do the race. You wanted to
win
, for fuck’s sake. Winning’s not a crime. The rest you might have left to him. His doing. His fault.’

Faraday bent towards the speakers, trying to interpret what he was hearing. Finally he realised that Charlie Oomes was laughing.

‘You guys crack me up,’ he said. ‘You want to do something about that dialogue of yours. You need a good writer. Happens I know just the bloke.’

The interview went on, Winter taking the lead, Dawn Ellis occasionally trying to appeal to Oomes’s better nature. It wasn’t just Maloney they had to account for. Aside from Henry, two other lives had been lost, young lives, and Hartson’s version was absolutely clear. Not that Charlie Oomes saw it that way.

‘They copped it when the boat went over,’ he said. ‘Like we nearly did. It was a lottery. End of story. That’s the way it happens at sea. It’s got fuck-all to do with strength or stamina or any of that shit. It’s where you happen to be standing. And what you happen to do next. Life’s a game, love. The lads had a lousy hand. A lousy hand means you end up dead.’

Dawn dismissed the speech with a snort of derision, but when she started to press hard, and Winter came in behind her, Oomes just yawned. He was tired. He’d had a long day. A muttered conversation with his solicitor, and the interview was at an end.

Pollock, alerted by the despair in Faraday’s voice, drove to the station. It was two in the morning. He reviewed the tapes, and talked to both Winter and Dawn Ellis. A separate interview team – Cathy Lamb and Alan Moffatt – had confronted Derek Bissett with Hartson’s account, but the ex-CID man, ably represented, had declined to answer any questions at all. Instead, he’d supplied a half-page statement that couldn’t have been clearer. They’d had a successful Cowes Week. They’d competed in the Fastnet Race, they’d been caught in the storm, they’d lost their navigator over the stern and later the same night they’d also lost two crew mates in a catastrophic capsize. They owed a debt of gratitude to the rescue services and one day, God willing, they might venture afloat again. Until then, he’d be obliged for a little peace and a little quiet.

Faraday was still sitting in the empty interview room, staring at the tape cassettes. Pollock had just fetched another round of coffees from the machine up the corridor.

‘I don’t think they’ll budge, Joe,’ he said. ‘And without corroboration, we’ve got nothing but Hartson’s word.’

‘He’s telling the truth, sir.’

‘I think he is. I think you’re right. But we’re talking lawyers here. Oomes can afford to buy the best. They’ll crucify Hartson. They’ll tear him to pieces. We’ve all seen it a million times. It’s not about the truth, it’s about money.’

Faraday picked up one of the audio cassettes, weighing it in his hand. In his heart, he knew Pollock was right. The CPS wouldn’t even risk a trial unless he could come up with something else.

‘He assaulted me,’ he pointed out. ‘And I’ve got witness statements to prove it.’

‘Sure,’ Pollock pushed one of the coffees towards Faraday in a gesture of sympathy. ‘And talking to his lawyer, I get the feeling he’ll be suing you for harassment.’

By the time Faraday left the station, the sky over Fratton was beginning to lighten. He’d been locked in conference with Winter and Dawn Ellis. Winter, for once, had been nothing but helpful. He wanted another crack at Oomes and maybe Bissett in the morning. He wanted to go over every last particle of Hartson’s statement, in the search for some tiny fragment of evidence that might nudge Oomes into making a mistake.

Faraday had helped him as best he could, setting out the chronology, detailing the inquiries that he and Cathy had been making, but the more he gritted his teeth and tried to step back from the case, the more he realised that Pollock and the rest of them probably had a point. Not one perfect murder, but two. Maybe even three, if you included David Kellard.

On the steps of the police station, Faraday produced his mobile. At Pollock’s invitation he’d succumbed to three hefty Scotches, and the last thing he needed was a pull for driving under the influence.

‘Cab, please—’ he began.

He felt a hand on his arm. It was Winter. He nodded at the Honda in the car park.

‘Give you a lift, boss?’

They drove in silence through the empty streets. Faraday had seldom felt so exhausted, so completely drained. Both physically and mentally, there was nothing left. In Milton, Winter inquired where to turn, and for the first time it occurred to Faraday that Winter didn’t know where he lived.

‘Next right,’ he said, ‘then down to the bottom. I’ve got lots more Scotch.’

Winter accompanied him into the house. He accepted a small Scotch and stood in the big living room, staring out as a steely grey light settled on the mud flats beyond the window. Faraday had collapsed on the sofa. After a while, Winter glanced down at him.