The mobile went dead again, and Winter stared at it for a full thirty seconds, his big face beaded with sweat.
Armed with a magistrate’s warrant, Faraday and Cathy Lamb searched Ian Hartson’s Chiswick apartment. The state of the place reminded Faraday of his first glimpse of Maloney’s seafront apartment: a life abruptly interrupted. Amongst the litter of clothes, books, notes and newspaper cuttings about the Fastnet disaster, Faraday turned up a sheaf of bank statements. These revealed substantial transfers into Hartson’s account. Faraday asked Cathy to take the details and commission further inquiries from the bank through the Force Intelligence Unit at Winchester. He wanted a source for the transfers, plus details of movements within the account over the last couple of days.
‘If you push them, they’ll turn it round in hours,’ Faraday told her. ‘Give them a ring.’
While Cathy talked to the FIU, Faraday dialled 1471 on Hartson’s phone. His most recent call had come from a nearby travel agency. When Faraday phoned back, they confirmed an inquiry on behalf of Ian Hartson and despatch of ferry details for the crossing from Portsmouth to Bilbao.
Cathy had finished on her mobile. Force Intelligence were contacting NatWest with Hartson’s details and expected a result before close of play.
Faraday nodded.
‘Haven’t come across his passport, have you?’
Cathy shook her head. Faraday had fired up Hartson’s computer and she stood behind him, studying the files on the hard disc. He opened one marked ‘Cape Clear’ and found himself looking at the first draft for the feature film treatment commissioned by Charlie Oomes. He scrolled through the pages of dialogue, eavesdropping on the race that had caught Hartson’s imagination, and then stopped at a map showing the tracks of the lead yachts. There was an awful lot of ocean between Cowes and the Fastnet Rock.
Faraday stepped back from the screen, deep in thought. For the last twenty-four hours, he’d been trying to put himself in Henry Potterne’s shoes. Say he’d killed Maloney at Port Solent. And say he’d sailed with the body aboard. Would it really have been that simple to slip it overboard on the passage back to Cowes? Or was Bevan right when he’d dismissed the possibility? Whatever the answer, a body on the boat at Cowes would have been even harder to dispose of. Hundreds of surrounding yachts. Partygoers by the thousands. And then, at dawn, serious last-minute preparations for the race itself.
Cathy was over by the window, thumbing through a pile of sailing magazines.
‘Did you manage to lay hands on a plan of the yacht?’ he asked her.
‘Marenka?’ Cathy nodded. ‘It’s in the car.’
‘Good.’
Faraday returned to the PC. Within seconds, the printer had given him a copy of the map from ‘Cape Clear’.
Cathy was watching him, puzzled.
‘What’s that for?’
‘Reference.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s hope Oomes is still at work.’
The headquarters of Oomes International were on a trading estate beside the M4 at Brentford. A high wire fence surrounded a car park, and a couple of spartan-looking warehouses bristled with closed-circuit television cameras.
At first, the receptionist dismissed the possibility of an interview. Without an appointment, no one got in to see Mr Oomes. Only when Faraday produced his ID did she consent to pick up the phone.
Charlie Oomes’s office occupied a whole corner of the administrative block. The Venetian blinds were down against the hot slant of the late afternoon sunshine, and Charlie was at his desk, brooding over a spreadsheet on the computer screen. Back in the real world of profit and loss, he appeared to have dismissed the events of last week.
Faraday settled into a chair at the nearby conference table. He wanted an exact chronology of the race. He wanted to know everything that had happened from Friday night through to the moment when the yacht had gone down.
The back of Charlie’s neck began to redden. He gestured impatiently at the grid of figures on the screen.
‘Ever tried running a fucking business, by any chance? Ever tried keeping track of it all? Takes a bit of time. Time I don’t have just now.’
‘We could do this at my place or yours, Mr Oomes. Mine is in Portsmouth.’
Oomes spun round. For a split second, Faraday scented the possibility of physical violence. Then Oomes calmed down, tossing his pencil on to the desk.
‘Class-wise we were odds-on to win,’ he said. ‘You wanna start there?’
Faraday declined the invitation. Painstakingly, he began to jigsaw the chronology of the Fastnet together. On Friday night, according to Ian Hartson, he and Henry had returned to Cowes in Marenka. True or false?
‘True, obviously.’
‘Where was she tied up?’
‘The Yacht Haven marina.’
‘What happened then?’
‘They both came up to the Royal Corinthian. Me and Derek were already there. We all had supper.’
‘How was Henry?’
‘OK, perfectly normal.’
‘Was he drunk?’
‘No way. I’ve told you. Henry drank. He didn’t get drunk, he drank. There’s a difference.’
‘Was he distressed at all? Upset?’
‘No.’
‘Was he … did he look … damaged at all? Bruised? Any signs that he might have been in some kind of fight?’
‘No.’
Oomes was hunched at his desk now, his head tucked into his shoulders, the classic boxer’s stance. He was playing it tight, giving nothing away. When Faraday asked which table they’d occupied, and exactly what time they’d eaten, he shrugged. It was mid-evening. It could have been any fucking table. He couldn’t remember.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, really. And you know why? Because since then we’ve all been to hell and back. I can’t remember where the table was and I can’t remember the name of the waiter’s mother-in-law. Oh, and by the way, I just lost three good friends at sea. Does that sound reasonable to you?’
‘But you had a booking?’
I expect so. Henry handled all that. He was a member. Phone them. Ask them.’
‘Was it busy that night?’
‘It’s always busy.’
‘So other people would have seen you?’
‘Of course. If they’d got nothing better to look at.’
Faraday watched Cathy scribbling notes. He’d make sure she had someone over in Cowes first thing tomorrow, testing every link in Oomes’s story.
‘So where were the two lads that night? Sam and David?’
‘Dunno. Out, somewhere.’
‘When did you next see them?’
‘Saturday morning. Half past nine. We all met for breakfast.’
‘At the house?’
‘Of course. I gave them a pep talk. Not that they ever fucking listened.’
‘So they wouldn’t have been on the boat since …?’ Faraday frowned, waiting for an answer.
‘Thursday. That was our last race round the cans. And we call it a yacht, by the way, just for the record.’ Oomes nodded at Cathy’s notepad. He was still combative, still angry, but he was stepping carefully now, doing his best to keep Faraday at arm’s length.
Faraday wanted to know exactly where Marenka had been berthed in the Yacht Haven marina on Friday night.
‘Why?’
‘We may decide to send divers down.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
Faraday ignored the question. Were the berths numbered? Did you have to book ahead? There must have been a record, surely, of where the boat had been moored?
‘We tied up alongside another yacht,’ Oomes said. ‘I think she was one of the Aussies.’
‘Did you go out again that night?’
‘No way. Another couple of guys made fast to us. We were tucked up for the night.’
‘Have you got names for these boats?’
‘No. And it’s a big marina. You’re talking maybe a hundred yachts. Every night you�
��ve got a different neighbour. God knows who it was on Friday.’
‘We’ll check, then.’
‘Good fucking luck.’
Oomes had picked up the pencil again. When Faraday asked about the race itself, and the choice of course that first night, he began to tap it on his desk.
‘You had a choice,’ he said slowly. ‘You either followed the herd and rock-hopped down the coast, or you put a good deep tack way down into mid-Channel. The coast can be tricky. There are loads of tidal gates. Miss one of them and you’re going backwards. It’s all down to the weather in the end, the weather and the wind.’
‘So what did you do?’
Faraday produced the map he’d taken from Hartson’s printer and now he spread it on the table. Oomes glanced at it without comment.
‘We went south,’ he said. ‘Looking for the wind.’
‘And the rest of them?’
‘They mainly stayed inshore.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that was their punt. The Fastnet’s a gamble. Saturday the wind was shit. It was coming at us from the south-west but there wasn’t much to it. It could have done any fucking thing. The guys who stayed inshore were looking for a freebie on the tide. Like I say, we went south.’
‘Who’s idea was that?’
‘Henry’s. He’d been dialling up the weather people all afternoon. There’s an outfit in Florida gives you read-outs from weather buoys and whatnot right down the Channel. That’s all Henry needed. Give him the raw data and he could find wind in a vacuum flask. Guy was a genius.’
Faraday paused, struck by this piece of hi-tech wizardry.
‘What do you mean, dialling?’
‘Henry had a laptop and a mobile. That close to land, you can access the Internet through a modem. It’s chicken-shit. Any kid could do it. Couple of seconds for the connection, and Henry could give you the weather anywhere in the world.’
‘Henry used the laptop a lot?’
‘All the time. Plus he had a couple of PCs, one for home, one for the business. I used to give him a deal on the hardware and bundled all the software he could handle. He loved it, loved it. Bloke was a natural around computers. Some of the nav programmes he actually offered to improve.’
Faraday nodded.
‘So Saturday night, at Henry’s suggestion, you went south …’
‘Yeah, and you know something? He was right. Midnight Saturday the wind backed southerly, just the way he’d said it would. Little anticyclone, slipping eastwards, way out in the Channel. It was so small every other fucker missed it. The inshore boys were gutted. We’d stuffed them.’
‘You were out there on your own?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘No other boats around?’
‘Obviously not, that was the whole point.’
Faraday was staring at the map, trying to imagine the fleet thinning as they pushed west. Most of the boats had stayed inshore, tacking against the wind from headland to headland. Marenka, on the other hand, was way out in the Channel, cloaked by darkness.
From his briefcase, Faraday fetched out the plan of a Sigma 33 that Cathy had acquired from a local chandlery. He laid the plan beside the map, taking his time.
‘You had a watch system?’ he asked at last.
‘Everyone has a watch system. Four hours on, four hours off.’
‘The two lads, Sam and David, were they on the same watch?’
‘May have been.’
‘David’s father says they were.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yes. When they were off-watch, they’d get their heads down, wouldn’t they?’
‘If they were lucky, yeah.’
‘Go to sleep even, down below.’
‘Might do.’
‘Where, down below?’
‘In the main cabin. It’s pretty much of a slum but that’s where you kip.’
Faraday reached for the plan. Thick in the waist, Marenka tapered gracefully towards the bow. Forward of the tiny loo, beyond a bulkhead, lay the forecabin. Faraday’s finger hovered over the bow.
‘There’s a hatch above the forecabin, isn’t there?’
‘Yeah. It’s small, though.’
‘But big enough for a sail bag?’
‘Sure.’
‘So if you wanted to get something out of the forecabin without using the main cabin … you could do it, couldn’t you?’
Faraday waited for an answer. Oomes was staring at him.
‘Like what?’ he said.
Faraday ignored the question. He was still studying the plan of the Sigma when Oomes leaned forward, stabbing a thick forefinger at the very middle of the boat.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘this is a fucking garden shed you’re talking about. Five paces end to end down below. It’s tiny. I’ve measured it. This forecabin you’re on about isn’t at the end of some fucking corridor. It’s just the other side of the bog. And the bog is smaller than a wardrobe. We’re talking intimate here. You wanna keep something nice and private, forget it.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘I wouldn’t. Because I couldn’t. And that’s the whole point. OK?’
Faraday abandoned the boat plan and returned to the map.
‘I need to know exactly where you went down.’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You can’t?’
‘No way. We were south of Land’s End around midnight, then we headed north-west. The weather was shit already. The wind backed to the south-east and we were flying. By one in the morning it was off the clock. I tell you, we were down to a storm jib and thinking of binning that. Huge fucking seas. Stuff coming at us from everywhere. Then the wind stops. Then it starts again. Bang on the nose, right out of the north-west. We didn’t know where we fucking were. It was all we could do to keep the boat in one piece.’
‘Yacht,’ Cathy said quietly.
‘Yacht, then.’ Oomes hadn’t taken his eyes off Faraday. ‘They clocked those winds at force eleven. Force eleven. That’s one down from a hurricane. It was unbelievable. You ask me where we came to grief I have to tell you I haven’t a clue. The guys who picked us up will have a position but that was hours later.’
Faraday permitted himself a tiny frown. From Land’s End to the Fastnet Rock was nearly a hundred and eighty miles.
‘So she could be anywhere …?’ he said.
‘Marenka?’ For the first time, Oomes smiled. ‘I’m afraid so, my friend.’
There was a long silence. Then Oomes glanced pointedly at his watch and got to his feet. He had an important client to meet in less than an hour’s time. If he didn’t get his figures together, the guy would have flown halfway across the world for nothing. Faraday nodded, then rolled the yacht plan inside the map and secured them both with an elastic band.
Beside the door was a photo of Charlie Oomes and Derek Bissett at some function or other. They were sitting at a table, sharing a bottle of champagne, their glasses raised to the camera.
Faraday paused, then glanced round. Oomes was sitting at his desk, his back turned, staring at the computer screen. Faraday mentioned the rumour he’d heard about Bissett when he was still with the Thames Valley force. Charlie had offered him bungs to put police contracts his way. Not just bungs but the guarantee of a job once Bissett’s days in uniform were over. Did Charlie have a view on that?
Oomes didn’t move. Faraday stood patiently by the door, awaiting a reaction. Finally, Oomes’s left hand steadied on the computer keyboard. He didn’t bother to turn round.
‘Can you prove any of that drivel?’ he said.
‘Not yet.’
‘Then don’t waste my fucking time.’
They were nearly back on the M25 before Cathy began to voice her reservations. She’d listened to Faraday over the last couple of days. She’d listened to him building theory on theory, pushing his assumptions just as far as they would go. Some of the links he’d made were blind guesswork. Others were really shrewd.
But was he really suggesting that Charlie Oomes and the rest of his crew had somehow volunteered themselves as accessories to murder?
Faraday nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘But Bissett’s a copper.’
‘Was. Until Oomes bought him.’
‘And Hartson?’
‘Oomes has probably bought him, too. Have the FIU come back yet?’
‘No.’ Cathy stared out at the flaring sunset. ‘So what was in it for Oomes?’
‘Winning. He wanted to win. That’s all that mattered. That’s all that’s ever mattered. Without a navigator, he’d have been stuffed. He’s practically admitted it himself.’ He paused to pass a convoy of Eddie Stobart trucks. ‘And what’s the risk? He dumps the guy at sea on night one. According to Kellard’s parents, the two kids have buddied up. They’re off watch. They’re probably asleep. They don’t even know there’s a body aboard. The boat’s way out in the Channel. There’s no one else around. Looks foolproof to me.’
‘You’re serious? He sets sail with a corpse? You really think he’d take a gamble like that?’
‘I know he would. He’s been gambling all his life. That’s what the firm’s about. He’s a guy who loves cheating the odds. Show him a challenge and he can’t resist it. He’ll square every circle. Just as long as he wins.’ He glanced across at her. ‘You don’t see it, do you?’
Nineteen
Back in Portsmouth, Cathy found the details of the FIU inquiry waiting on her computer. The bulk of the major transfers into Ian Hartson’s bank account had come from Charlie Oomes. The most recent, a sum of fifteen thousand pounds, had been deposited only yesterday when Hartson had also withdrawn eight thousand in cash from his local Chiswick branch. Cathy pointed out the time at which the counter transaction had been logged. Twelve forty-six. They’d missed him by barely an hour.
‘Where do you think he went?’
Faraday was asking himself the same question. From memory, the Bilbao ferry sailed on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Tomorrow was Saturday, and he’d certainly get someone down to the ferryport to watch embarking passengers, but it seemed unlikely that Hartson would sail from here. With eight thousand pounds in your pocket there were a million ways of getting to Spain. Why risk Portsmouth?
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