Silent Running

by Pauline Rowson

‘That’s what they all say,’ Ross answered cynically, then seemed to acquiesce. ‘But you’re right. It was one of those cases where everything fitted and yet your gut told you it was wrong. It was too neat and I remember when I saw Terence Blackerman being sentenced, it didn’t seem right. He didn’t seem right.’

  ‘You think he was innocent?’

  ‘No. Everything pointed to him being the killer but I was convinced there was something he was holding back, something that might have made a difference to the life sentence he got. He didn’t look shocked at the sentence, just sorrowful and I don’t know …’ Ross rubbed a hand over his chin. The dog looked up and gave a small whine as though sensing something in his master’s demeanour. Marvik could see Ross was recalling the incident and thinking back down the years.

  ‘It was as though he was steeling himself to shoulder the punishment, not because he was guilty, which is what Grainger said when I voiced my views to him, but because there was something he knew only he wasn’t telling.’

  His words echoed what Crowder had told him. ‘You think he was protecting someone who could have been involved in this woman’s death.’ Marvik almost said her name then.

  ‘There was no one else involved. There was only his DNA and fingerprints in the room, aside that was from the cleaner who was at home with her family at the time Esther Shannon was killed, and the previous occupant’s DNA and she was sixty miles away at the time of the murder. Anyway it was a long time ago. Terence Blackerman’s probably out by now.’

  Again Marvik bit his tongue, though something inside him was telling him to come clean with Ross. Maybe he would, later. He hadn’t expected him to be quite so open but perhaps now Ross was nearing retirement he’d already slipped into the habit of reliving his past glories, and was ready to regale them to anyone prepared to listen and even those who weren’t.

  ‘Perhaps you should write your memoirs when you retire, about your most interesting cases,’ Marvik encouraged.

  ‘It would bore the pants off everyone. Don’t they say never look back.’

  They do, Marvik thought with conviction. ‘Perhaps Grainger will write his memoirs.’

  ‘If he does they’ll be worth a few bob because they’ll come from the other side. He was killed in a hit and run nine months after retiring in 2004. Car came out of nowhere as he was crossing the road in Brighton.’

  So that was why his name wasn’t in the meagre file Crowder had left him. ‘That’s tough for his family.’

  ‘He was divorced years ago, no kids.’

  Marvik left a moment’s pause before saying, ‘Why did Terence Blackerman kill this woman, Esther Shannon?’

  Ross shrugged. ‘Perhaps she wouldn’t let him have sex the way he wanted it. Maybe he went in for bondage and she wasn’t playing. Or maybe he could only get aroused if he was violent.’

  ‘Did he admit that?’

  ‘No, and there was no evidence she was beaten up. He denied any kind of sexual pressure or quirks. As you said, he was a naval chaplain, with an exemplary record, well liked, married with a kid. No hint of any marital tension or stories that he liked the women or that he’d ever been violent before.’

  ‘But he would have seen violence,’ Marvik insisted thoughtfully. ‘He’d have gone into battle with his men. He’d have served in the Gulf War, perhaps even the Falklands War in 1982.’

  ‘Not the Falklands, but Esther Shannon’s father was killed in the Falklands War.’

  ‘Blackerman would still have seen conflict. Perhaps he was suffering from post-traumatic stress.’

  ‘Not according to the medical reports.’

  So he had been medically examined. Marvik wondered what they’d found. ‘Whoever examined him might have been incompetent.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Was Esther Shannon in the services? Perhaps they’d met some time before and had an affair?’

  But Ross was shaking his head. ‘We found no evidence of that or that he knew Esther’s father. She was in London for the Remembrance Service and so was Blackerman.’

  ‘So they met at the Albert Hall.’

  ‘No, at the Union Services Club, in the lift.’

  Marvik’s ears pricked up at this new information.

  ‘It got stuck. They were trapped in it and struck up a friendship.’

  ‘How long for?’ Marvik prayed silently that Ross would continue to be talkative. He half expected him to ask, ‘Why all the questions?’ But he didn’t.

  ‘Eighteen minutes. He went back to her room and into her bed. That’s pretty quick work for anyone.’

  And especially a chaplain, thought Marvik, and yet he remembered Charlotte’s words on Wednesday night. I don’t want to be alone. Had Esther Shannon said the same to Blackerman? Had she been frightened? Had she told Blackerman why she was afraid? Was that why she was killed?

  Ross was saying, ‘Blackerman returned to Portsmouth early the next morning before her body was discovered by the chambermaid. When Esther Shannon didn’t hand in her key, the maid went in to investigate and found the poor woman dead. Blackerman claimed he left her room at one thirty a.m.’

  So not so scared that she didn’t ask him to stay the night. Why not? The case had obviously stuck in Ross’s mind, probably because, as he’d revealed, he’d had doubts about the conviction. ‘Did she attend the Remembrance Service every year?’

  ‘No, that was the first time according to her sister, Helen, and obviously her last.’

  But her father had been dead for fifteen years so why not go before? Enquiring about that might be one question too far. Ross had already been surprisingly forthcoming. And perhaps tomorrow he could ask him a few more. ‘You must have had lots of interesting cases.’

  ‘I have, and disturbing ones. But not for much longer,’ he finished brightly. ‘How long are you staying?’

  ‘Just for tonight.’

  ‘Well, good luck with your application.’

  That was Ross’s way of getting shot of him and it sounded as though he didn’t intend being here tomorrow. Marvik patted the dog and headed up the pontoon towards the Boathouse Café where he bought a coffee and sat close to the window but not directly in it.

  Sipping his coffee he kept his eyes on the pontoons. From here he could see Ross’s boat. He watched him emerge from the cabin with a mobile phone pressed to his ear. Nothing wrong or unusual in that. Perhaps he’d got a call from work or a family member. Marvik wished he could lip read because there was something about the man’s posture and his serious expression that told him it wasn’t a social call. He frowned, puzzled. There was also something different about Ross’s demeanour. His body language was more assertive. He looked more like a man in charge, in fact a Detective Chief Inspector, rather than a man with an oily rag tinkering with an engine inclined to talk about the old days. Or rather the one old case Marvik had pumped him about.

  Ross rang off and disappeared into the cabin. Marvik swallowed his coffee and ordered another. He took it back to the same seat. There were three people in the café but nobody he recognized or interested in him. Eight minutes later he saw Ross stride up the pontoon with the dog following more slowly at his heels. For a moment Marvik wondered if they were heading towards him. But Ross made for a saloon car in the car park. The dog jumped in the back, Ross climbed in and pulled away. Marvik waited a couple more minutes, then left the café and headed into town.

  He found the library in Maltravers Street just off the B2140. Soon he was seated at a computer terminal and searching the Internet for information on the hit-and-run incident that Ross had told him had killed former DCI Bryan Grainger. He was certain the local newspaper must have covered it. They had and in some depth, he was pleased to see.

  He read that Grainger, a former Detective Chief Superintendent with the Metropolitan Police, had been killed in Broad Street, the opposite of its name it appeared, because it was described as a narrow one-way street that ran north from St James’s Street to Marine Parade, in the south, the latter
being the main A259 running along the seafront not far from the junction with the Sea Life Centre and the pier. It had been dark, raining heavily and very windy. The streets had been deserted. It was shortly after eight thirty p.m. on the twenty-ninth of October. There had been only one witness, a woman called Linda Hannam, who had been visiting her sister who ran a guest house in Broad Street. And she hadn’t seen exactly what had happened. She’d heard a car rev up and shoot off and had turned to see a man’s body on the ground. She thought it had been a large black car but couldn’t say what make or give the registration number. She was in shock. She didn’t even know in which direction it had turned when it reached the junction with Marine Parade. She rushed to see if she could help and had phoned the emergency services but Grainger had been pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Enquiries by the police, Marvik read, hadn’t discovered why Grainger was in that street. He lived alone in Chichester, a cathedral city just over thirty miles to the west of Brighton and about fifteen from Littlehampton. He hadn’t been registered at any of the guest houses and no one could remember seeing him or serving him in any of the bars and pubs in Broad Street or nearby. A house-to-house had unearthed no further witnesses and the CCTV cameras along the seafront had failed to pick out the vehicle. No one had come forward to admit to the crime and as far as Marvik could see no one had been arrested for it.

  There was a small piece about Grainger’s career in the Met, but no mention of his cases or the Esther Shannon investigation. According to what Marvik was reading, Grainger had worked for the Serious Organized Crime Agency, and had had an exemplary record. So what had he been doing in Brighton? Taking the night air? Hardly on such a wild night. Visiting or meeting someone? Possibly. But that person had never come forward and that meant he or she didn’t want to be involved. But whether the hit and run was deliberate or the action of a drunk or drugged driver, Marvik didn’t know. And if it was deliberate then it might have nothing to do with Esther Shannon. It could have been connected with another crime Grainger had investigated in the past while working in the Serious Organized Crime Agency. His cases would have involved drug and human trafficking, armed robbery and murder. There would have been enough candidates for the Sussex police to check on in cooperation with their colleagues at the Met – but had they? And if Grainger had been killed because he was about to reveal something about Esther Shannon, then Marvik knew he was also in danger, a fact that Crowder had pointed out. Did Duncan Ross also know the truth behind Esther’s death? Was he in danger? He’d survived for seventeen years after Blackerman had been sentenced, so perhaps he knew nothing.

  Marvik left the library, bought some sandwiches and ate them on the waterfront thinking over his conversation with Ross. There was no need for Ross to have lied to him, but equally there had been no need for him to tell him what he had about the Blackerman case. Marvik could put that down to his clever questioning technique and acting skills but surely a copper would know when he was being pumped for information. But perhaps Ross had just told him what he might have been able to find out if he’d applied to see the files under the Freedom of Information Act. He wondered what would be in those files. Perhaps he should make a request to see them, except that it would take far too long, and he didn’t have the luxury of time on his side if he wanted to find Charlotte alive.

  He called Strathen using his own mobile phone again. Strathen told him that Charlotte was on the usual clutch of social networks where she’d posted about her work and friends, but there was nothing to give him any indication of where she might be.

  ‘The police must be checking out her friends and relatives,’ Strathen added, clearly as worried as Marvik judging by his tone. ‘I can’t find her having any connection with Palmer. Can’t you tell me more?’

  ‘I will tomorrow. I’m heading back.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’

  He rose. There was nothing more he could glean about Esther Shannon and her death here from Ross because he had the feeling that Ross wasn’t about to return. It was time to talk to Helen Shannon.

  SIX

  Sunday

  It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon though that Marvik was finally driving the Land Rover towards Locks Heath and the address he’d been given for Helen Shannon. The weather had closed in on Saturday afternoon and gale-force winds and heavy rain had persisted throughout the night, preventing him from leaving Littlehampton until Sunday morning. When he’d arrived on the island just after midday his cottage was how he had left it. There was no sign of an intrusion.

  Several times during the night and on the crossing to the Isle of Wight he’d considered calling Crowder to report in and then decided against it. He had nothing new to tell him and although Crowder might be able to give him more details about Grainger’s accident, Marvik doubted he would. Crowder would claim that going through official channels would alert the killer. Marvik guessed he’d already done that by talking to Ross but then he was the bait. He had no evidence that Ross would go running to the killer, but a nagging feeling, born out of what he’d seen and heard yesterday, told him that there was something not right about the man, and about their earlier exchange.

  He’d caught the three o’clock Red Funnel sailing from East Cowes to Southampton and on the hour-long crossing had speculated what Helen Shannon might be like. He didn’t even know if she was older or younger than Esther. Maybe he wouldn’t find her at home. She might be on holiday or working. But he knew that however he found her, and when he did, his questions would bring back painful memories for her. Perhaps she wouldn’t want to talk about her sister’s murder. He couldn’t blame her if she didn’t.

  It was just after four thirty and raining heavily when he turned into a modern estate a few miles south of the motorway. Earlier he’d stopped off at a garage and bought a street map. The area had been built up so much over the years that without a map he could waste a lot of time going around in circles. He had satnav on his mobile phone but didn’t want to risk using it in case he was being tracked, and besides there was no substitute for maps for giving him a better all-round view of the terrain.

  The three-storey modern house was the last in a row of identical properties. It faced another row of the same style of properties across a road where cars were parked at an angle separated by a line of bare-branched trees and street lighting. It being Sunday most spaces were taken despite the fact that the properties had garages with cars parked in front of them. But Marvik found a space almost opposite Helen Shannon’s house and next to a street light which flickered intermittently in the gathering dark and rain. He climbed out and studied Helen Shannon’s house. There was a light showing on the first floor and an old Fiat was parked in front of the garage. Someone was at home but it might not be the woman he was hoping to talk to.

  He pressed his finger on the bell and waited under the porch out of the rain. He hadn’t heard the bell sound inside the house and as no one came to answer it he tried again, and lifted the knocker.

  ‘OK. I’m coming,’ a woman testily cried out. He could hear footsteps on the wooden flooring.

  The door opened and Marvik found himself confronted by a thin woman in her early thirties. She was about five foot five and dressed head to toe in black with long, bright purple hair and heavy dark eye make-up. Despite that he found her attractive.

  ‘Helen Shannon?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes?’ she answered cagily. Her wary brown eyes flicked over his face. He wondered what she saw – a scarred stranger dressed casually – and what she thought, that he was about to sell her cavity wall insulation or con his way into the house to steal from her?

  He hastily apologized for disturbing her and added, ‘I’d like to talk to you about your sister.’

  He watched her visibly start before fury swept across her face. ‘Oh yeah, and who the hell are you? You’re a bloody journalist, aren’t you? Well you can sod off.’ She made to slam the door on him.

  Marvik th
ought he hadn’t handled that very well. He could see there was no bullshitting her. Placing his hand firmly on the door to prevent it being slammed on him he quickly said, ‘I’m a friend of Charlotte Churley who has gone missing after visiting the man who killed your sister in prison. I’m trying to find Charlotte before someone kills her and I think they will because somehow she’s stirred up interest in your sister’s death and someone doesn’t want that, which makes me wonder why.’

  ‘Crap!’

  ‘Charlotte visited Terence Blackerman in prison on Wednesday. He told her he didn’t kill your sister.’

  She snorted. ‘And you’ve fallen for that! Of course he killed her. He followed her to the lift, chatted her up, followed her to her room and then raped and killed her.’

  ‘There was no evidence of rape.’

  Her expression held contempt. ‘You don’t have to use physical violence to get what you want. Threats of physical violence are enough and as Esther’s not alive to say any different he would say she was willing, wouldn’t he?’

  It was a good point. He said, ‘It was out of character for her then, to sleep with a man she’d only just met?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  His hand came solidly on the door again. That had been clumsy of him and harsh. He desperately needed her cooperation. He took an inner breath and said urgently, ‘Helen, please. I need your help. I’m sorry for offending you.’

  She looked about to repeat her previous instructions, then hesitated. Perhaps she’d caught the despair in his voice or saw it on his face because after a moment she stepped back and reluctantly, still with suspicion said, ‘You can have five minutes. And the clock starts ticking now.’ She consulted the large watch on her bony wrist.

  Relieved he entered the narrow hall and made to close the door behind him but she said, ‘Leave it.’ Clearly she didn’t trust him. He didn’t blame her.

  Swiftly he continued. ‘Charlotte’s a nurse in the Royal Navy, she’s seen a lot of wounded personnel and been into combat zones. The police believe that nursing Paul Williamson, who was Terence Blackerman’s son, who died as a result of his wounds incurred while in action, and then visiting Blackerman in prison to tell him of his son’s death could have pushed her over the edge and has nothing to do with the fact that Blackerman maintains his innocence.’ Or rather the police with the exception of Crowder believed that. ‘I don’t agree. Charlotte came to me worried that someone was following her. She was obviously right.’