Turnstone

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘He came back with some kind of picture,’ he said.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was wrapped up in newspaper.’

  ‘You never saw it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You never asked about it?’

  ‘No. I was busy. The new life raft had to be lashed down. There was a problem with the gennie halyard. We were due back for supper. I had food to sort out, spare batteries, all kinds of stuff.’

  ‘So what happened to this picture?’ Faraday wouldn’t let go.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? You’re squashed together on this tiny boat and you don’t know?’

  ‘It came back with us to Cowes. After that—’ He shrugged. ‘I never saw it again.’

  ‘Did anyone else come along? Before you left for Cowes?’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘After Henry returned, were there any other visitors?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hartson nodded. ‘Stu Maloney turned up. He knew we’d come over and he’d dropped by to wish us luck. It was a nice thought.’

  ‘Did he seem angry at all? Maloney?’

  ‘No. Disappointed, obviously, and pissed off about the arm, but not angry.’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘He went.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘No, we had a drink together.’

  ‘What kind of drink?’

  ‘I think it was malt whisky. Henry drank a lot of malt, Glenfiddich mostly.’

  Faraday bent to his pocketbook again while Hartson waited for the next question. He had his hands linked around his knees now, his long body rocking slowly back and forth in the chair.

  Faraday sucked the end of his Biro for a moment or two.

  ‘So let me get this clear,’ he said softly. ‘You and Henry bring the boat over on Friday afternoon. Henry disappears for an hour. Maloney turns up out of the blue, just by chance, and – hey presto – you happen to be there. You all have a drink. Maloney pushes off. And then you and Henry go back to Cowes. Have I got that right?’

  ‘I don’t know about out of the blue. Maybe Henry phoned him or something.’

  ‘On whose phone?’

  ‘Henry’s I suppose.’

  ‘He had a mobile?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So there’d be a record of the call?’

  ‘I expect so. Yes, of course there would.’

  Faraday gazed at him, openly sceptical. Then he went at Hartson’s story again, different angles this time, different approaches, testing it this way and that, exposing little inconsistencies, pushing and pushing until Hartson finally dropped his head again and signalled no more.

  ‘Listen,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I’ve told you everything I know. We took the boat over. Henry went off and came back again. Stu had a drink with us. And then he left and we took the boat back to Cowes.’

  ‘Do you happen to know where Maloney went?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t say?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he take a taxi? Did he walk?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘So he just went? Just like that? Just wandered off?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Faraday nodded, saying nothing. Cathy stirred in the shadows beyond the pool of light.

  ‘You’re sure there wasn’t any kind of incident? Fight? Him and Henry?’

  ‘No, definitely not. Why would they want to fight?’

  He looked up at Faraday, almost pleading for an answer, for an end to this ordeal, and Faraday gazed back at him, nodding slowly, the friendly GP, ever patient.

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ he murmured at last. ‘I was rather hoping you might be able to tell me.’

  ‘He’s lying.’ Faraday stifled a yawn.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Definitely. And pretty soon he’ll tell us why.’

  They were still parked outside the house. Hartson had checked the street twice, a tall, stooped figure up at the window. The second time he’d appeared, Cathy had given him a little wave. An hour would be long enough to spook him. Then they’d go in again.

  But it didn’t work that way. The second encounter took less than half an hour. Hartson was a different man, taciturn, monosyllabic, giving nothing away. When Cathy asked him about the Friday afternoon, he simply referred her to his previous answers. When she asked him what he’d got to lose by going through it all again, he just shook his head, studied his hands and made pointed remarks about how late it was getting.

  Driving south, towards the glow of Guildford, it was Faraday who finally broke the silence.

  ‘He made a call,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘and I bet it was to Charlie Oomes.’

  Fifteen

  Faraday drove to Port Solent early next morning to supervise the naval dive team tasked to search the floor of the yacht basin around Charlie Oomes’s waterside property. The lack of tide and current simplified the preparations and Faraday and the dive team leader agreed a throw radius from the yacht pontoon before the two divers submerged to begin a fingertip search. With visibility poor, the dive leader warned Faraday to expect a long wait.

  Cathy arrived shortly before eleven. Two and a half hours had so far produced a single plimsoll. Cathy, who knew about plimsolls, judged it to be a Dunlop Green Flash, size eight or nine. It must have been submerged some time because the canvas was green with algae and the stitching was beginning to rot.

  ‘Might as well put it back.’ She smothered a yawn. ‘I can’t see this going to forensic.’

  Faraday was watching the twin lines of bubbles in the murky brown water, expelled air from the divers working the basin floor. Despite the dive leader’s warning, they were already some distance out from the pontoon. Any further, and Faraday would have difficulty tying recovered objects to Oomes’s yacht.

  He turned towards the back of the house. Two early-morning calls to Oomes’s home address in Berkshire had so far failed to raise the man but Faraday would keep trying. A full forensic search, if it came to that, would be a declaration of war. Far better to go for a preliminary trawl, looking for signs of some kind of struggle, and to do it with Oomes’s prior permission. In the meantime, a uniformed PC stationed outside would keep intruders at bay.

  Faraday felt a tug on the sleeve of his jacket. It was Cathy. He followed her pointing finger, shielding his eyes against the glare of the sun.

  ‘Over there in the upstairs window,’ she said. ‘It’s Elaine. She’s been watching us all morning.’

  Cathy was right. Faraday recognised the scarlet bathrobe and the long blonde hair. He raised a hand and waved a greeting, but Elaine Pope turned away.

  Faraday was driving back into the city when he took the call from Sandra Maloney. She wanted to know what was going on. She and Patrick had been steeling themselves for another visit. Nothing, thank God, had happened. In the absence of yet more harassment, might she assume that Faraday had lost interest?

  Faraday accelerated into the outside lane. Off to the right, hundreds of seagulls were wheeling and diving over the municipal dump. From this distance, they looked like clouds of white paper.

  ‘Yes and no,’ he said.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I don’t think either of you were involved.’

  ‘How comforting. And how nice of you to keep us informed.’ She paused. ‘Have you, by any chance, found the time to talk to anyone at the university?’

  ‘Not yet, Mrs Maloney.’

  ‘Then I suggest you do. We had a conversation last night. Her name’s Jan Tilley and she is Stewart’s departmental head.’

  There was a long silence. Faraday inquired about Emma. How was she bearing up?

  ‘Not well, Inspector. But then that’s hardly a surprise, is it?’

  *

  Paul Winter had never had much time for hypermarkets. Under suffrance, at the weekends, he would occasionally volunteer to keep Joan company on a tr
ip to the local Asda but he loathed the feel of the place – the lighting, the endless shelves, the slow, trancelike procession from aisle to aisle – and the bigger the store, the more irritated he became.

  Tesco, on a huge site next to Port Solent, was the biggest of the local hypermarkets and he’d done his best to sell Juanita an alternative rendezvous, but on the phone she’d been adamant. If he wanted to meet her that morning, then it had to be Tesco. She was a busy woman. She was due at the hospital at noon but there was muchas obras to get done first. If he was lucky, she might even allow him to push her trolley.

  To Winter’s alarm, she meant it. He found her sorting briskly through one of the chill cabinets. Her handshake numbed his fingers.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ She nodded at the trolley.

  Winter looked down at the packets of langoustine and frozen squid. When Marty Harrison finally emerged from hospital, he was in for a treat. Winter began to push the trolley as Juanita zigzagged down the aisle. She did everything, he was beginning to realise, with an intense sense of purpose. Don’t be fooled by the skin-tight white cut-offs and the curling smile. Here, very definitely, was a woman who knew her own mind.

  Twenty minutes later, at Winter’s insistence, they paused at the in-store coffee shop. Winter bought cappuccino and Danish for them both, hurrying back to the table in case she hit the aisles again, but he needn’t have worried. Despite the ‘No Smoking’ notices everywhere, she’d already lit a cigarette, and now she was sitting cross-legged in her chair, ticking items on her shopping list.

  Winter settled at the table, content to wait. He’d been in touch with Harry Wayte, DI on the Drugs Squad, telling him he’d snared a Grade A informant. He hadn’t mentioned Juanita’s name, nor the fact that she was Marty Harrison’s mistress, but he could tell from the quickening in Harry’s voice that he was more than interested. Red Rum, despite all the Drugs Squad spin, had so far been a disaster. They had five of Harrison’s colleagues banged up in the remand wing at Winchester nick but, if he was to be honest, the evidence against them was pretty thin. What Harry needed, very badly, was a headline or two. Something to justify all the money he’d spent. Something to redress the balance after the fuck-up at Harrison’s place. Something to keep the suits off his back.

  Winter lifted the cup to his mouth and sucked the froth from the top of the cappuccino.

  ‘You wanted me to find out about Elaine,’ he said, ‘and Marty.’

  ‘Sí.’ Juanita moistened a finger and reached across, wiping the froth from the tip of Winter’s nose. ‘You’ve talked to her?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’

  Winter hesitated. He’d rehearsed this conversation a number of times in his mind. Her English wasn’t perfect, which meant there was more room for ambiguity than usual, but he still had to get the phrase exactly right because one day she would doubtless confront Marty with the evidence and Marty – being Marty – would want to know where it came from.

  ‘It’s difficult,’ he began, ‘but I think you could say that he’s looking after her.’

  ‘Looking after her?’

  Winter nodded. It was like feeding pennies into one of those old pinball machines. The lights came on at once.

  ‘That’s why he’s there so much.’

  ‘You mean …?’ Juanita bridged the gap between them with a plaintive gesture of her hand.

  Winter nodded again, wondering whether it was too early to offer condolences. The essence of every sting was patience.

  ‘He’s known her a while,’ he said. ‘In fact they go way back. School, even. Same estate. Same friends.’

  ‘Same bed. I can see it. I can see it from my place. You think that’s some kind of joke? You think he does it deliberately? So close? So close I can almost see them? Behind those curtains?’

  The thought of Marty looking after Elaine Pope brought a deep flush to Juanita’s olive face and, watching her, Winter could imagine why Harrison had become so smitten. She’d be this way in bed, impulsive, uncontrollable, all over you the moment you stepped out of your kaks.

  ‘You did ask,’ he said carefully, ‘and I’m sorry to be the messenger.’

  ‘Qué?’

  ‘The messenger. The bringer of bad news. Anything I can do—’ It was his turn to gesture at the space between them, then he got to his feet. She stared up at him, in anger as well as disbelief.

  ‘You’re going? You’re leaving me? You tell me news like that and then you go?’

  The question, as ever, was direct, an unmistakable challenge, and for the first time it began to occur to Winter that he might be looking at the freebie of his dreams. Open house. Any time.

  He looked down at her and smiled. On these occasions, the biggest mistake was to be too eager. If this incredible woman meant what he thought she meant, then only time would put her to the test.

  ‘Must run,’ he said. ‘You’ve got my number. Give me a ring and we could have a proper chat. Somewhere’ – he nodded at the mid-morning queue forming at the counter – ‘a bit more intimate.’

  From his desk back at the station, Faraday phoned the name Sandra Maloney had given him. Jan Tilley indeed worked at the university and it was plain at once that she was expecting Faraday’s call. This morning she had just half an hour to spare, then she was off to London for the rest of the week. If they were to meet, then it had to be now.

  Putting the phone down, Faraday went next door to the CID room, wondering whether Cathy was available to do the interview. More and more, he felt a pressing need to talk to Charlie Oomes, but so far he hadn’t even got through to him on the phone.

  The CID room was empty. On the point of leaving, Faraday noticed a fax from the Force Intelligence Unit at Winchester, stamped with yesterday’s date and wrongly filed in one of the in-trays. All requests for call print-outs on domestic phones went through the FIU, and this one listed calls over the last month from the phone in Stewart Maloney’s flat. Faraday scanned it quickly, then glanced at his watch. Jan Tilley’s train left at twelve-seventeen. If he was to catch her before she left, he’d have to run.

  Jan Tilley was a thin-faced woman in a smart linen jacket with black-painted nails and a dry, slightly nervous cough. She occupied a small, cluttered first-floor office in the university’s Department of Art, Design and Media and she numbered Stewart Maloney amongst her many administrative headaches.

  ‘Sandra’s not dealing with this at all well,’ she said. ‘I think it might pay you to treat her a little more gently.’

  Faraday acknowledged the slap on the wrist with a weary nod. A plea in mitigation would have been worse than useless. After half an hour on the phone to Sandra Maloney, this woman had obviously made up her mind about the CID.

  ‘I understand you might be able to shed some light,’ he said.

  ‘Possibly. Possibly not. Let me explain.’

  She began to slide the rubber band off a roll of sketches on her desk, then had second thoughts. With Stewart’s work, she said, there’d never been a problem. He was a gifted teacher and brought out the best in many of his students. They liked his attitude, what she called his ‘cultural take’, and when they told her that he actually cared about them – about their problems and their difficulties and the challenges they were going to have to face in the world outside – she believed them.

  She broke off, puzzled by Faraday’s slow smile.

  ‘You sound almost as defensive as me,’ he said. ‘What’s the catch here?’

  ‘Catch?’

  ‘You’re telling me he’s a great teacher. You’re telling me that he’s conscientious, that he gets results, that he cares. So where does he go wrong?’

  ‘I’m not sure I—’ She looked warily towards the door. ‘maybe he cares too much.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘One or two of the students.’

  ‘Female?’

  ‘Yes. I’m thinking of one in particular.’

  ‘You’re telling me he’s been having some kind
of affair?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘It can be, yes. He isn’t married, of course. But some of these girls aren’t as mature, as grown-up, as they look. And Stewart, bless him, is a great believer in looks.’

  The girl’s name she wouldn’t reveal, but the affair had gone on for months and when Maloney began to hint that they might live together after her graduation, she’d believed him. Which made the inevitable parting – she called it the dénouement – all the more painful.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Stewart fell in love with someone else.’

  ‘Another student?’

  ‘No, not at all. A mature woman, this time. Someone his own age for a change.’

  ‘She works here?’

  ‘No, not really. He employs her occasionally as a model in his life-drawing classes. And it’s apparently no secret that his interest goes way beyond … ah … figurework.’

  At last the elastic band came off the roll. Maloney’s student girlfriend had been especially gifted at life drawing. Her depictions of the human body had evidently been outstanding, a celebration of proportion and line. By the time it was her turn to sketch Maloney’s model-friend, she’d become all too aware of the rumours.

  Faraday nodded at the roll of sketches.

  ‘Are they hers?’

  ‘No, that’s what made it all the harder. These are drawings of the same woman, but by other hands. Here. You ought to look.’

  She cleared a space on the desk and flattened the roll. Faraday got up and found himself looking at a woman in the prime of her life. She was lying on a button-backed chaise longue. She had beautifully shaped legs and full breasts, and the way her hands lay interlinked over the roundness of her belly suggested a woman completely at ease with her own nakedness. It was a body that beckoned motherhood, eerily familiar, and as Faraday leafed through the rest of the drawings it became harder and harder not to think of Janna, his own wife. Some of the figurework was uncertain but the more gifted students had caught the expression on this woman’s face and it spoke, at once, of vitality and a deep, deep sense of inner calm.