Turnstone

by Hurley, Graham

  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.

  ‘We’ve got twenty-four hours from last night,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘plus another twelve if Bevan gives the say-so.’

  Faraday nodded. They could hold all three men for a day and a half without having to go to a magistrate and face a legal argument.

  ‘What’s the point, though? Pollock’s right. Oomes and Bissett won’t crack.’

  ‘They won’t get bail, though. And that means Winchester nick.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Marty Harrison’s mates are in there. The ones the drugs squad busted the morning they shot the boss. They’re banged up on the remand wing. One big happy family.’

  Faraday was up on one elbow now. Winter was right. Charlie Oomes would spend at least a night on the remand wing at Winchester prison.

  ‘So?’ he said again.

  Winter moved towards the window. He’d seen movement out on the harbour. He wanted to know what it was. Faraday peered over the back of the sofa.

  ‘Cormorant,’ he said briefly. ‘Tell me about Winchester.’

  Winter shrugged, then emptied his glass.

  ‘I got word through to Marty about the state of Elaine Pope’s face,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think he was best pleased.’

  Faraday studied him for a long moment, then smiled.

  ‘Result,’ he murmured.

  Epilogue

  For the next week or so, Faraday pulled together the file on Maloney. He’d thought about getting a statement himself from Ruth Potterne, but in the end he asked Cathy Lamb to do it. Ruth confirmed receipt of Maloney’s e-mail, described Henry’s state of mind as ‘troubled’, and admitted a relationship with Ian Hartson. Reading her statement, Faraday was uncomfortably aware of looking for clues about her current feelings. Was she still seeing Hartson? And if so, was it as all-consuming as it had been before?

  With the file readied for despatch to the Crown Prosecution Service, Faraday resumed his vacation, buying himself a ferry ticket to France and running J-J to earth in a borrowed flat on a housing estate outside Caen. To his immense relief, the boy seemed genuinely happy and by the end of the evening he was beginning to suspect that he’d got Valerie wrong. She wasn’t, after all, a threat to J-J. Au contraire, she seemed – in ways that Faraday didn’t fully understand – to be in love with him.

  Before he left Caen, Faraday invited them both to stay and bought a pair of open ferry tickets to seal the invitation. When J-J took him aside, wanting to know whether there were any strings attached, Faraday shook his head. J-J was twenty-two. For both of them, life had moved on. J-J looked delighted and then kissed him on both cheeks.

  ‘Very Gallic,’ Faraday signed in return, beaming.

  In early September, a French fishing boat trawling for hake thirty miles north of Roscoff recovered a body from the sea. The face and flesh were largely eaten away, but a British passport in one of the pockets of the weatherproof jacket yielded a name and next of kin. Sam O’Connor, Ruth Potterne’s son.

  The body was taken to Roscoff and stored overnight in a big freezer full of gutted fish. Inquiries were made next day by the local Chef de Police and a telex was despatched to the CID Superintendent at Portsmouth. That evening, Ruth Potterne answered a knock on her door. It was Faraday. He’d spent the best part of a month trying to work out what he’d say when this moment arrived, but the French police had spared him the trouble.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,’ he began.

  The following morning, he drove her to the airport at Southampton. A chartered Cessna flew them to Roscoff, where an unmarked police car was waiting on the tarmac. The body had been transferred to a mortuary in the city’s hospital.

  When the green-suited attendants slid the gurney out of the big fridge, Ruth needed only a second to confirm that the body was indeed her son. A sturdy silver chain still hung around what was left of his neck. He’d bought it in Brighton only weeks before his summons to replace Maloney on the Fastnet Race.

  Outside the mortuary, Faraday conferred briefly with the pathologist who’d already examined Sam’s remains. His English was far from perfect but he left Faraday in no doubt that the body held few clues to the circumstances that had led to the boy’s death. He’d doubtless come to grief in some kind of accident. Water in his lungs indicated death by drowning. Aucun mystère.

  Before they returned to the airport, Faraday took Ruth to a nearby hotel for a drink. They sat at the bar and he did his best to comfort her while choosing the best moment to ask about Ian Hartson. Hartson, like Bissett, was currently on bail, charged with conspiracy to murder. In the absence of further evidence, CPS lawyers were close to dropping the case.

  ‘Have you seen him at all? Hartson?’

  ‘Yes. We met in London last week.’ She smiled. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason really. I felt a bit of a fool, that’s all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For not asking the obvious question. Henry was right. You were having an affair. I made his mistake. I never looked further than Maloney.’

  ‘Was that your fault?’

  ‘Of course it was. I’m a detective. That’s why they pay me.’ For the first time that day, she laughed.

  ‘Men are funny,’ she said. ‘They’re always getting things in a muddle. Ian’s the same. He’s no more idea of who I am than Henry had. He’s got an image in his head and he’s too lazy or too insecure to get beyond that. Men should take a closer look sometimes, and maybe listen a bit harder.’

  Faraday rocked back on his stool. The last thing he’d been expecting was a speech like this and it was hard not to take it personally. He reached for his glass, suddenly keen to change the subject.

  ‘I’m sorry about Sam,’ he said. ‘Just when you might have been coming to terms with it.’

  She shook her head very slowly, a gesture tinged with pity, then leaned forward on the stool
and touched him lightly on the hand.

  ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I wanted a body. I wanted a funeral. I wanted to say a proper goodbye. I think psychiatrists have a word for it … closure?’ She smiled at him. ‘Isn’t that what they call it?’

  Faraday swallowed a mouthful of Kronenburg, saying nothing. He thought he’d got this woman out of his system. He thought the last couple of weeks would have been quite enough to have loosened the grip she’d taken on his life. He was wrong.

  ‘What about Charlie,’ she was saying, ‘Charlie Oomes?’

  There was a big gilt-framed mirror on the wall behind the bar. For a second or two, he studied their reflection. Should he tell her the truth about her son? That Oomes had thrown him overboard? That otherwise he might have survived?

  Of course he shouldn’t. He studied the remains of his lager. According to Winter, Oomes’s blood had been all over the showers on the remand wing, and the latest reports from the hospital had confirmed the need for plastic surgery. A life sentence, after all.

  Faraday raised the glass in a toast.

  ‘Closure.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll drink to that.’