Turnstone

by Hurley, Graham

  The invitation was rhetorical, Faraday knew it was, but the implications made him look away. Time and again Hartson had led the interview back to Ruth, to the strange spell she’d woven, not in a bid to shift the blame, but in an almost detached fascination with the chain of events that had led him from a London media career to a holding cell in a provincial police station. He’d fallen in love with the woman. They’d had an affair. And months and months later, it had led to this.

  ‘Who made the first move?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I did, by accepting Henry’s invitation to stay. She did, by being there. Stuff happens. It’s pointless trying to analyse it.’

  ‘But that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? That’s what you said you wanted?’

  ‘That’s true.’ He nodded.

  ‘So answer my question. Who made the first move?’

  Hartson sighed. His face had ballooned round the jawline where Oomes had beaten him up, but so far he’d had four paracetamol and the pain didn’t seem to worry him. Far more important was Ruth.

  ‘I did,’ he said at last. ‘It was around Christmas time, maybe just after. Henry had some kind of sale at the gallery and he wasn’t around a lot. He’d been kind enough to lend me his study at home. That’s where the reference was. He had Fastnet stuff coming out of his ears.’

  ‘And Ruth was there?’

  ‘Most of the time, yes. She’d bring me coffee, rustle up a spot of lunch. We found we liked the same food, the same books. We talked at first. That’s all. Just chatted. It was easy. And we laughed a lot, too.’

  Faraday found himself nodding in agreement. He’d been there. Only a couple of days ago, in his own kitchen, he’d been there. Laughter was where it began. Laughter was the real aphrodisiac.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Hard to say. It just grew. A kind of closeness. I can’t describe it. I felt I’d known her for years. I even used to talk to Henry about it. It was that innocent.’

  That innocent.

  Was this what Faraday had stumbled on? The guilt-free murder? The slaying so hedged around with wonderful moments that it ceased to have anything to do with crime and punishment?

  ‘You cheated,’ Faraday pointed out. ‘She cheated on her marriage and you cheated on your friend.’

  ‘I know. That’s what was so unbelievable, so hard to grasp. It was never in the game plan, never what we intended. What we had was simple. It felt good. It felt whole. The last thing we wanted to do was hurt anyone.’

  ‘Maloney died.’

  ‘I know. I was there.’

  ‘He died because you lied.’

  ‘By omission, yes.’

  ‘Because you let Henry believe that Ruth was screwing Maloney.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you never told him otherwise.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  Faraday leaned back, letting the implications sink in. It was no longer a question of formal admission. Already, earlier on the tape, Hartson had described in great detail exactly what had happened on the Friday afternoon before the race. How Henry had accessed the e-mail message on the passage over from Cowes. How he’d gone looking for Maloney and returned with a picture of his wife posing naked on a chaise longue. How Maloney had pursued him back to Port Solent, outraged in his innocence. And how Henry, maddened by drink and jealousy, had smashed an empty bottle of Glenfiddich over his head and sliced his face to ribbons with the jagged remains. Maloney had done his best to defend himself but a broken arm hadn’t helped. After the fight, there’d been blood and tissue everywhere. Even making a film about Ron Dunlop had never prepared Hartson for this.

  Now, he was still tussling with the implications of what he’d done. Faraday shook his head, putting the record straight, his finger in Hartson’s face.

  ‘What you’d both done,’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Does Ruth know about Maloney? What actually happened?’

  ‘Christ, no.’ He seemed startled. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Yes. As far as she’s concerned, he’s done a bunk. He was that kind of guy. Forever dreaming of the next affair.’

  ‘And she’d never …?’ He left the question unfinished.

  ‘No, God no. Not Maloney. If you knew Ruth at all, at all, you’d know there’d be absolutely no way.’

  Faraday gazed at him. He was right. She’d never cheapen herself with the likes of Maloney. The silence stretched and stretched.

  ‘So what does that tell you about Henry?’ he said finally. ‘He seemed pretty convinced about Maloney.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘And you didn’t bother to put him right?’

  ‘Not at all. Maloney was a smoke-screen, a cover for us. Henry was jealous anyway. He was just made that way. He didn’t really know Ruth, not the way I knew her. He couldn’t get close to her – and that simply made him more manic. The slightest symptom, he’d think the worst.’

  ‘You were the worst.’

  ‘No. That’s just it. That’s the paradox. We were the best. How come all this’ – he gestured at the tape machine, at the log, at the bars on the single window – ‘comes out of all that?’

  At the custody sergeant’s insistence, they broke for forty minutes to let Hartson have something to eat. Faraday was under instructions to keep Pollock and Bevan informed of progress, but instead he stepped out of the police station and walked to Old Portsmouth. He wanted to be by himself. He wanted to know exactly what had happened to Maloney’s body.

  ‘We put him in a sail bag,’ Hartson said. ‘Big black thing. Have you ever tried doing something like that? It takes for ever.’

  They were back in the interview room. Hartson’s swollen chin was smudged with ketchup.

  ‘The cabin would have been a mess,’ Faraday prompted.

  ‘It was. We did our best to clean it up on the way over to Cowes but you’re right. It was. I’d no idea. Absolutely none.’

  ‘No idea of what?’

  ‘No idea how much blood there is inside a human body. Henry must have hit an artery. The stuff was everywhere—’ He broke off, studying his hands. ‘You know something? I can’t look at kitchen roll any more. I can’t bear the sight of it. At home I had to throw them out. Ruthie had some on the houseboat.’ He shuddered at the memory.

  Faraday pretended to make a note on the log. Ruthie, he thought. This man’s property. The little gem he’d spotted in his travels. The magical village way up in the mountains, hidden from view, undiscovered by the world. He’d moved in and made her his own. His, and his alone.

  ‘You got back to Cowes,’ Faraday said. ‘What did you tell Oomes?’

  ‘We cooked up a story about a tart, a young kid, a junkie down from Liverpool. Henry had screwed her for twenty quid. She’d tried to nick his credit cards. He’d had too much to drink—’

  ‘And killed her?’

  ‘That’s right. It happens. Believe me.’

  Hartson sat back at the table, nodding. This is the way it would have been, Faraday thought. The older man, driven half insane by his own demons, and the cool young writer, cooking up an alibi to hide his own guilt. Hartson worked in the invention business. He invented people. He invented plots. Deep in his head, he may even have invented his precious Ruthie, with consequences he can never, for a second, have imagined. At some point along the way, Ian Hartson had confused real life with his own elaborate fantasies and this was the result.

  ‘What did Charlie Oomes say?’

  ‘He bought it. He wanted to do the race. That was what mattered. The last thing he cared about was some young skag-head who no one had ever heard of.’

  ‘And Bissett?’

  ‘He thought it was crazy.’

  ‘And criminal?’

  ‘Sure. But he went along with it in the end because Charlie made the decisions. On that boat, you either did what he said or you waved goodbye. Bissett couldn’t afford to wave goodbye. Not with the busine
ss and everything. Not with the opportunities Charlie had put his way. He was mortgaged to the hilt. He liked working for Charlie. And he liked the money, too.’

  Bissett had been arrested at his home in Beacons-field. Like Charlie Oomes, he’d be available for interview later in the evening.

  Faraday pushed the story forward.

  ‘Did the other two know? Sam? David Kellard?’

  ‘No. We’d stuffed the sail bag away in the forward cabin. There was no need to go in there, so there was no need for them to know. We were going to dump it at sea, just as soon as we could, the further out the better. There was anchor chain in the bag to help it sink, and a couple of old car batteries.’

  ‘Heavy, then?’

  ‘Sure. But Henry came up with a lift using a spar and the gennie halyard. We could have got it out through the forward hatch. No problem.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Sam and Dave never went to sleep. Not that first night. And Charlie wasn’t prepared to involve them. The second day we were on a long beat down to Land’s End and it all got a bit edgy. Sam and Henry were always having a go at each other. Sam was Ruthie’s boy. He resented Henry, always had done, and Henry knew it. They’d pick a fight over anything. What course to sail. How many tea bags in the pot. Anything. Being around them both was like the holiday from hell. You just wanted to hide.’

  ‘But on a boat like that?’

  ‘You can’t. There’s nowhere to go. You’re forever on top of each other. Plus you’ve got a body stashed away. Nightmare.’ He shook his head. ‘Total nightmare.’

  A patrol car whined past on the dual carriageway outside, its two-tones slowly receding into silence.

  At length, Hartson looked up. The light was fading now and Faraday was reminded of the evening he and Cathy had first interviewed him at his Chiswick flat. His voice was lower, his tone less certain, and Faraday wondered whether the consequences of what he’d done, of what he was saying, were beginning to dawn on him.

  ‘Maloney started to smell,’ he said. ‘Henry had locked the forward cabin but the smell must have got into the bilges. It was everywhere. You couldn’t avoid it. The cabin smelled like a butcher’s shop. Sam wanted to find out why.’

  ‘So he looked?’

  ‘Eventually. Charlie kept giving him jobs to do, silly jobs, stuff to keep him out of the cabin, but that only made it worse. Sam wasn’t stupid. He knew something was up and he wanted to know what it was.’

  By now, they were closing the Lizard. According to the weather reports there was a storm on the way.

  ‘Sam and Dave were talking about putting in to Falmouth. I think they’d both had enough but Charlie wouldn’t hear of it. He said we were going on. We’d come to sail round the bloody Fastnet Rock, and that was that.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘Me? I thought it was surreal. It was like being in some film, some movie. I couldn’t believe what was going on. In a way it was all logical. I knew the background. I knew exactly why everything had happened. Yet to end up on this tiny yacht, with a body up one end and a bunch of guys who were driving each other barmy at the other, was beyond belief. On top of that, there was this storm coming. I’m no sailor but you could almost feel it. There was something about the sea, the wind. It was like an animal, stirring …’

  He fell silent again, contemplating that awful evening. Sam had gone to the heads and then broken into the forward cabin and discovered the sail bag under one of the bunks. He’d dragged it single-handed into the main saloon and unzipped it.

  ‘We were all down there except Derek Bissett. He was on the helm. Maloney’s face had gone black. I’ve never seen anything like it. Charlie went potty, absolutely potty.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Henry had lied to him. That was even more surreal. Charlie hadn’t seen anything wrong in getting rid of some girl Henry had shagged, some junkie, and I’m not even sure he’d have objected to dumping Stu. It was the fact that Henry had lied. He just kept yelling at him. Betrayal. That was the word he used. Henry had betrayed him. He completely lost it. He was completely off his head.’

  ‘How did Henry react?’

  ‘Henry had been out of it most of the day. It was my job to get rid of the bottles.’

  Marenka ploughed on. The wind backed to the south-east and the yacht began to ship the biggest waves over the port quarter.

  ‘That’s when Sam tried to send a Mayday. He thought Charlie was busy in the forward cabin. We’d chucked Stu overboard by now and Charlie was making Henry clear up the mess. While he and Henry were up forrard, Sam tried to get the call out. Charlie caught him and cancelled it. Then he put a rigging spanner through the VHF and dumped the flares overboard. That did it for Sam. He turned on all the gas jets on the stove and tried to set fire to Henry’s charts. Charlie doused them with a towel but it was chaos. They were just swinging at each other. Mad. Completely mad.’

  Faraday remembered the state of Oomes’s face the morning after he’d been rescued. The damage had come from Sam, not the storm.

  ‘And this message he tried to get out? You’ve got a time?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It was coming on dark.’

  ‘No other boats around?’

  ‘Nothing close.’

  Faraday grunted in agreement. According to the Pendennis Radio, the beginnings of the call had been received at 20:21. Within the hour, the wind had been blowing at gale force.

  ‘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 wer
e 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.