Lost Voyage

by Pauline Rowson

  Quickly, Marvik followed up with, ‘I think you might know or have met a friend of mine, Gavin Yardly.’

  Her shock at hearing the name was evident. Her body stiffened and she blinked hard before frowning and saying crisply, ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  Oh, but she had. So why deny it? ‘I believe he might have contacted you about your late husband, the master on the Mary Jo.’

  Her lips tightened. Her alarm swiftly turned to wariness but Marvik also detected fear in her pale blue eyes, perhaps because she didn’t want painful memories dredged up. Her voice was hard when she said, ‘I have no idea who you are talking about and I have nothing to say to you about my husband or the tragedy.’ She made to close the door but was halted by the arrival of a car which drew to a stop in a flurry of gravel. With interest, Marvik noted the name emblazoned on the side – Medlowes, along with the words Letting and Property Management. Strathen had told him that Medlowes was one of Bradshaw’s companies, along with Aquamarine Cleaning and Antara Yacht Brokerage.

  Meryl Landguard addressed Marvik sharply. ‘I’m busy. I need to see to my grandson. Now leave.’

  ‘Of course.’ But Marvik merely stepped aside as a woman in her early thirties retrieved a bawling child from the rear of the car. He recognized her instantly as one of the women in the photographs on Bradshaw’s mobile phone, only this time she was wearing a lot more than a bikini. She was dressed smartly in a tight-fitting black skirt and red jacket, underneath which was a crisp, white open-neck shirt.

  ‘I can’t get him to settle,’ she said, handing over the squirming child to Meryl Landguard and barely glancing at Marvik. When she did, she showed no curiosity about him being there. She looked too tired and seemed to be in too great a hurry to worry about anything more than offloading her child. Her eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep, probably because of her fretful baby but perhaps also because of her boss and lover’s death, if those photographs on Bradshaw’s phone were anything to judge by. Her fair-skinned face was drawn. Meryl Landguard’s expression wasn’t exactly softening either as she took the little boy in her arms. Marvik got the impression she’d liked to have thrust him back and told the younger woman what she could do with her child. Grandson he might be, but Meryl Landguard seemed a most reluctant grandmother. Marvik sensed the tension between the two women.

  ‘I’m late. I have to go,’ the younger woman said tetchily. She tossed Marvik a dismissive glance before hurrying back to her car.

  Marvik addressed Meryl Landguard. ‘I realize it must be upsetting for you but I’d like to talk to you about the Mary Jo when it’s convenient.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t and it never will be. I have nothing to say to you or to anyone else about it.’ And with that, she slammed the door on him. He stood for several moments staring at it and listening to the cries of the baby, which seemed to increase in volume. Obviously the Mary Jo was a sensitive issue as far as Meryl Landguard was concerned, understandably so. She didn’t know who he was. He expected her to be wary but why so hostile? She’d given him no time or encouragement to introduce himself. And why hadn’t she been curious as to why he was asking about her husband’s vessel all these years later or how he knew about it? And she hadn’t asked him why he was enquiring about a man called Gavin Yardly.

  He turned south out of the driveway and began to walk towards the Birling Gap and the coast. Was the younger woman Meryl Landguard’s daughter or daughter-in-law? What had they rowed about or was their relationship always so cold and antagonistic? It was none of Marvik’s business, but the fact that the younger woman worked for Bradshaw was. And he knew where to find her. First, though, he was keen to see where Yardly’s body had been discovered.

  It was a little over a mile to the Birling Gap. He walked briskly along the road through the rolling green countryside with only a few cars passing him. Soon he was entering a large car park to the right of a sharp bend in the road which led up to Beachy Head before going on to Eastbourne. There was only one car parked in it. He crossed the gravel towards the sea. It was high tide and he could hear the waves crashing on to the shore. A handful of coastguard cottages stood to his left. Once there had been seven; now there were only four, and those would one day crumble over the cliff edge just as other buildings and land had disappeared here over the years. It was a long time since he’d been here walking the Downs and many years since he’d been moored out at sea on his parents’ boat. He couldn’t remember why they had been here. Perhaps for the same reason Sarah had – exploring one of the many wrecks that had been dashed to pieces on these shores over the years.

  He crossed to the top of the steps and stared out to sea. There wasn’t a single boat in sight. In the last two days he’d passed this way four times by sea, once on his way to meet Helen, then with her on board before heading back to Eastbourne, when they had discovered Bradshaw’s body, then making for the Hamble, and again yesterday evening returning to the marina at Eastbourne. The marina staff were too polite and too used to the ways of the strange and often erratic behaviour of yachting types, due to the weather and tides, to query his frequent comings and goings. They had heard the news of Bradshaw’s death but had nothing to add to what Marvik already knew, when he had delicately questioned them, and no one he had spoken to had made any connection between Bradshaw’s death and Gavin Yardly or Helen.

  Marvik turned away from the sea. The land around him was owned and managed by the National Trust. To his left was the shop, visitors’ centre and café, all closed with a notice saying they opened at ten a.m. To his right and the east was the coastal path up to Beachy Head, a well-known spot for suicides which Gavin had shunned, or rather his killer had. And to the west and Marvik’s left was Crowlink and the path over the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs, where just below Bailey’s Hill Crowder had said the body had been found. There were a few houses on the upward approach to the clifftop so someone living, or staying in them if they were holiday homes, might have seen Gavin, but Marvik thought it unlikely. He was convinced Gavin’s body had been taken ashore by boat.

  He struck out for the clifftop to the west. He’d consulted his Ordnance Survey map last night and had checked the distance between the flat where Gavin had lived and the place where his body had been found. He’d been correct when he’d said to Crowder it was seven miles. Gavin could have walked here but not at night and not carrying weights. And if he had done so in the daytime and thrown himself over the cliff, someone could have seen him, unless of course it had been very early morning. There was no one around now and it was just after nine a.m.

  He came out on the clifftop and walked the short distance to Bailey’s Hill, where he stopped and, in the blustery, cold April wind, peered down at the grey stones. There was nothing to indicate a body had been found there. Marvik gazed out to sea again. Still no shipping or boat movements on the grey, choppy waves of the English Channel. This would have been an isolated spot when Gavin and his killer had arrived.

  Whoever had killed him could simply have dumped his body in the sea, but that would have meant he might never have been found and therefore the police couldn’t assume suicide. They might have believed that Yardly was on the run. The killer had wanted Yardly to be found and for it to look like suicide so that Bradshaw’s murder could be neatly tied off. If Gavin was the ‘target’ Helen had overheard Colbourne and Marwell discussing then he was dead before Bradshaw was killed. Maybe that didn’t matter because the time of Gavin Yardly’s death would be difficult to pinpoint once the body had been exposed to the sea and the air. Or perhaps when Helen heard them say ‘it’s dealt with’, Gavin was being held somewhere by one of them until Bradshaw was killed. That made some sense because, according to the lock-keeper, those men had been in the marina for two hours. What had they been doing during that time? Sitting on their boats waiting for Bradshaw to arrive with Helen? Or had one of them been in the marina while the other had gone to kill Gavin at the place he was being held and had then returned to his boat, by which tim
e Helen was on board Bradshaw’s boat or just leaving it?

  Marvik returned to the Birling Gap and this time took the coastal path east towards Beachy Head. He set off at a brisk pace, ignoring the ache in his leg, a legacy of a former mission in the Marines. It would take him just over two hours to walk back to Eastbourne. He wasn’t at the peak of his fitness levels – his leg wound saw to that – which depressed him, but he wasn’t far off it and he’d fared better than Strathen, even though his array of expensive and ground-breaking technological prosthetic limbs meant that Strathen wasn’t far behind.

  He mulled over what Crowder had told him. Had Gavin Yardly simply stumbled on the discovery of the Mary Jo by accident? But if so, why report it to GCHQ? What did he know about the Mary Jo and its disappearance? Marvik was hoping Strathen would have some answers later that morning after locating and reading the marine accident investigation report.

  He wondered how long Gavin had been looking for the Mary Jo. Perhaps it was only recently that he’d gleaned some information about it, much as Marvik had done about his parents’ deaths, although he had no proof that it was anything other than an accident. His thoughts flicked to Sarah Redburn. Perhaps she had deposited other research material of his parents elsewhere. Neither her former boyfriend nor her previous boss had known of any but then she might not have told them. And what of Gavin Yardly’s research into the finding of the Mary Jo? In addition to writing to GCHQ, had he backed up his information on a USB stick that his killer had taken along with his computer? Or perhaps Gavin had backed up online and the information was waiting for someone to access it with an encrypted password. The killer could have extracted that password from Yardly, though, before killing him.

  What might have happened to the salvage vessel on her last voyage? The obvious answer was that it had run into bad weather and had been overwhelmed by heavy seas before having the chance to send out a distress signal. He’d be interested to know what the weather had been like on the day in July 2003 when it had vanished. But why was that salvage vessel so important? Why had Gavin been killed because of it? Why hadn’t anyone else located it? Maybe they had and Gavin Yardly wasn’t the only person to have died as a result. Other deaths could have been arranged and put down as suicide. If so, this killer was clever and experienced, and that made him highly dangerous.

  It was late morning by the time Marvik reached the town. He quickly located Medlowes, which wasn’t very far from Harold Road, and just off the seafront. It was a small office sandwiched between a Turkish restaurant and a shop selling what appeared to be every kind of bead and button on the planet. Medlowes’ windows displayed a range of accommodation and it was open for business as usual. As he pushed open the door he had wondered if it might be closed out of respect for its owner, or because the police had requested it, and that the woman he was seeking would be working in a back office behind the closed doors. But she was sitting at a desk towards the rear, and her name plate on the desk told Marvik she was Karen Landguard. A man in his late twenties with sleek-backed gelled hair was sitting at a desk at the front of the office.

  Karen Landguard looked up from her telephone conversation as he entered. It took her a moment to register where she had seen him before, at Meryl Landguard’s, and when the penny dropped a scowl flashed across her face that had a hint of concern in it. Hastily, she terminated her conversation and, rising from her desk, reached Marvik at the same time as the man in the light grey suit too tight for him addressed him.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’ll deal with this, Danny,’ she cut in abruptly and tossed Marvik an irritated glance. Her voice was hard when she said, ‘Are you from the police? We’ve already told you everything we can.’

  ‘I’m not the police.’

  She looked anxious and perplexed. Glancing back at her colleague, Danny, she stepped towards the door, expecting Marvik to follow, which he did. ‘Then what were you doing at my mother-in-law’s? And why have you followed me here?’ she asked, keeping her voice low. He could see she was trying to work out who he could be.

  ‘I wondered if you might be able to tell me more about the Mary Jo.’

  Her astonishment was quickly surpassed by her relief. He guessed she’d been worried that he’d somehow found out about her affair with her boss, if those intimate photographs of her with Bradshaw on his mobile phone were anything to judge. Perhaps she suspected her husband of hiring a private detective – him – who was now intent on blackmailing her in exchange for his silence. He wondered if the police had told her that Bradshaw’s mobile phone was missing. How had she reacted to that news if they had? She was uneasy, yes, and she looked as though she wasn’t sleeping, so perhaps she was fretting that the phone and its photographs might be discovered. But if so then she could simply tell the police that she had enjoyed the occasional business trip with Bradshaw on his boat and they were entertaining clients. In a bikini! Maybe. And Bradshaw wasn’t around to contradict her. There was also no need for the police to speak to her husband. He had no connection with Bradshaw or his murder.

  She said, ‘The Mary Jo happened a long time before I met Stephen, my husband, and he never talks about it. Neither does Meryl. Why are you interested?’

  ‘A friend of mine was researching it – Gavin Yardly.’

  Just as her mother-in-law had shown shock at hearing the name, so too did Karen Landguard.

  ‘You know him?’ Marvik quickly asked and watched the hesitation cross her face. Would she deny it, as her mother-in-law had done, or tell the truth?

  ‘He’s one of our tenants,’ she answered warily.

  She’d used the present tense, indicating Gavin’s name still hadn’t been made public by the police, or if it had she’d had no time to check the news or the Internet. Marvik hid his surprise at this new piece of information. He said, ‘Medlowes own the property where Mr Bradshaw’s body was found?’

  ‘Yes. Among others in the town.’ She studied him, perplexed and with continuing unease. ‘The police asked me about your friend but I have no idea where he is. Have you spoken to them?’ Then she registered what he had said. ‘Why would Gavin Yardly be interested in the Mary Jo?’

  That was something Marvik very much wanted to know. ‘Did Mr Bradshaw ever mention it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she confidently replied. ‘Why should he? Now, I have work to do.’ She made to turn but Marvik forestalled her.

  ‘I’m sorry about your boss’s death. I didn’t think you would be open.’

  ‘The police said we could carry on. There are still tenants to help and properties to let and manage.’

  ‘But no boss to pay you.’

  ‘The accountant is handling all that,’ she stiffly replied. ‘Now—’

  ‘I’d like to talk to your husband about the Mary Jo. Where can I contact him?’

  She eyed him, panic-stricken. ‘You can’t. He works in London.’

  ‘I can call him and arrange to see him.’

  ‘I can’t give you his number without asking him first.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll give you my mobile number.’

  ‘I don’t think …’ But he held her gaze and, after a moment, she pursed her lips, spun round and marched back to her desk to retrieve her mobile phone, obviously deciding that it might be the only way to get rid of him. She punched the number in as he relayed it to her, and his name.

  Danny interrupted them. ‘I’ve got to show that prospective tenant around the Cruikshank’s property.’

  She tossed him the car keys. Danny threw Marvik a curious glance before leaving.

  The phone started ringing. She was the only one there to take the call. Picking up the receiver with a defiant yet troubled glare at Marvik, she announced with false brightness and a slight tremor in her voice, ‘Medlowes Letting and Property Management, Karen Landguard speaking, how may I help you?’

  He stood for a while, wondering if he should wait for her to finish the call and then press her further, but perhaps letting her stew
for a while to grow more perplexed about his arrival and enquiries would yield better results, although he wasn’t sure what she could tell him except more about her boss and her mother-in-law.

  As he made for the door, he didn’t think the latter would have confided in Karen Landguard from what he’d witnessed earlier. Besides, he knew where to find her. He also knew that Strathen would be able to discover where she and her husband, Stephen, lived and probably where Stephen Landguard worked. Marvik wouldn’t wait for her to pass on a message to her husband to call him because he knew she wouldn’t deliver it anyway. But, as he turned, glanced back at her and caught her anxious glance, he took heart in the fact that she had given him some new and revealing information, because he now knew how Ian Bradshaw had entered Helen’s flat.

  SEVEN

  He bought a takeout coffee, a toasted bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and, finding a vacant seat on the promenade in a sheltered position, called Strathen.

  ‘The police have released Gavin Yardly’s name as the man found dead on the shore and asked for any witnesses who might have seen him on the cliff edge to come forward,’ Strathen said as soon as he came on the line.

  ‘When did they release it?’

  ‘Half an hour ago on the eleven thirty news.’

  Long after he had spoken to Meryl Landguard. Marvik told Strathen that the property in Harold Road was owned and managed by Medlowes, adding, ‘It explains how Bradshaw got into Helen’s flat. The fact that he was her landlord as well as her boss could make her sound more culpable for his murder in the eyes of the police. Bradshaw could have had a set of Helen’s keys in readiness before seeing her on his boat on Monday night, in case he felt like dropping in from time to time. But the keys weren’t on his body and they’re not on his key ring so the killer must have taken them after he killed him. What’s more, Karen Landguard works for Medlowes and she’s one of the women who feature in the photographs on Bradshaw’s mobile phone. Ask Helen if she knew Bradshaw owned that building and if she recognizes Karen Landguard.’