Trathen shaped another frown. “Why are you so interested?”
“Well…” Harding lowered his voice theatrically. “Truth is, Barney’s offered to put some money into my business. And I’m just wondering if he’s the sort of bloke I should get mixed up with. Financially-or in any other way.”
“Take a long spoon.”
“Sorry?”
“You’ll be supping with the Devil.”
Harding smiled. “He can’t be that bad.”
“You can find out the hard way if you want. Or you can take my advice. Give Barney Tozer a wide berth.”
“Why?”
“Because, sooner or later, he’ll shaft you. Take my word for it. What sort of business are you in, anyway?”
“Landscape gardening.”
Trathen emitted a derisive grunt, though whether at the expense of Harding’s choice of occupation or Tozer’s suitability as a partner in it was hard to tell. “Barney likes to dabble. No question about it. He’d just moved into fish farming when he took me on to handle his PR. But that all went by the board when he vamoosed to Monte Carlo. And my job with it.”
“Was he already in the timeshare game then?”
“Oh yeah. That and a few other games as well. Not all of them strictly kosher. As Kerry Foxton found out. To her cost.”
“She’s the girl who died in the diving accident?”
Trathen looked woozily surprised. “Clive really has been shooting his mouth off, hasn’t he? He’s not normally so… free with info.”
“I didn’t get her name from Isbister. I’ve been… asking around.”
“So it seems.” Suspicion was taking lumpen shape in Trathen’s mind, but Harding was prepared to bet he was too drunk to be restrained by it. “Kerry was a nice girl. Just too inquisitive for her own good.” He sighed. “But I suppose that goes with the territory.”
“What territory?”
“Well, she was a journalist.”
“Was she?”
“I should know, shouldn’t I? I fixed it for her to meet Barney. I thought he’d get an ego-stroking profile in one of the Sunday supps out of it. Instead, he got a load of very bad publicity and she got…” Trathen’s voice trailed into silence.
“It was an accident, wasn’t it?”
“So the inquest said. When they finally had one. She was a long time dying.”
“You were there when it happened?”
“Yeah.” A jag of painful memory twisted Trathen’s features into a grimace. “I was on the boat.”
“So, was it an accident?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows why Kerry’s oxygen supply malfunctioned? All by itself? Or with a little encouragement?”
“You’re suggesting… she was murdered?”
“I’m suggesting that delving into Barney Tozer’s affairs can be an unhealthy activity. Terminally unhealthy.”
“Come off it. You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?” Trathen’s gaze switched suddenly to a figure behind Harding. He raised a hand in half-hearted greeting. “Evening, Darren.”
“Hi, Ray.” A gangly, carrot-haired young man in jeans and garishly logoed zip-top hovered at Harding’s elbow. “Got a light?”
Trathen obliged with a light for Darren’s rollup. Leaning forward to accept it, Darren, who was clearly not having his first drink of the day either, contrived to slop lager from his crookedly held glass down Harding’s jacket.
“Shit, man, I’m sorry” Darren slurred, grabbing a bar-towel to mop up the spillage.
“It’s OK,” said Harding, smiling grimly as he repulsed the heavy-handed dabs of the towel. “I’ll be fine.”
“There’s not that much really.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“OK, man. Cool.”
“Why don’t we sit over there?” Trathen jerked his head towards a table by the window facing onto the street. “We’ll be out of harm’s way.”
Darren made a wavering peace-be-with-you gesture with his cigarette hand as they went, then plonked himself on a bar-stool next to someone else he knew.
“Sorry about that,” said Trathen when they had settled.
“Never mind.”
“Where were we?”
“You were telling me you think Kerry Foxton was murdered because she knew something to Barney Tozer’s disadvantage about his business activities.”
“I was telling you I thought it was possible. Distinctly possible. There were sides to Starburst International I knew nothing about-except that it was best to know nothing about them. Only Barney and that slimeball Whybrow know how it all fits together. See…” He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with delight in the intricacy of his conspiracy theory. “Kerry said she’d been sent down to do a piece for the Sunday Times on how the Cornish were dealing with the rush of visitors for the eclipse. But that was bullshit. I checked with them after the accident. Like I should have checked before. They hadn’t sent her. She’d freelanced for them in the past, but her Cornish trip was nothing to do with them. It was all her own idea. I think the eclipse story was cover for her to get close to Barney and learn some of his secrets. And I think she may have succeeded. Worse luck for her.”
“How did this… diving expedition… come about?”
“It was Barney’s idea. I thought he was out to impress Kerry. He seemed to be having a hard time keeping his hands off her. Can’t say I blamed him. She was quite something. Anyway I assumed the trip was intended to boost his action-man credentials. He fixed it with another old school chum of ours, John Metherell. Kerry was certainly keen on the idea. Maybe she thought she could hang another piece for the papers on it. The Association story’s always a good one to rehash.”
“The what?”
“Scilly’s most famous wreck. HMS Association. Flagship of Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell. Foundered on the Gilstone rock and lost with all hands in 1707. Never heard of it?”
“Don’t think so.”
“There was quite a hoo-ha when they located the wreck back in the nineteen sixties. Divers have been exploring it ever since, though all the valuable stuff was brought up years ago. John Metherell lives on St. Mary’s. He’s a real Association buff. Supposed to be writing a book on the subject. Due out next year, for the three hundredth anniversary. Well, it was due out then. Maybe he’s gone off the idea since the accident. I wouldn’t know. We don’t exactly keep in touch. Anyway, he organized the trip and went along for the ride, like I did. He even videoed it.”
“There’s a video of what happened?” Harding tried to sound only mildly curious on the point.
“Not exactly. John was too busy trying to help to do any recording once we knew something was seriously wrong. Not that there was much we could do. We got her breathing. Well, Alf Martyn got her breathing. He was the only one who knew any first aid. But it was obvious she was in a bad way. She never actually spoke. I’m not sure she knew where she was.”
“How did this… Alf Martyn… come to be on board?” “It was his boat. He makes a living out of ferrying tourists round the islands. He had his brother with him as well.”
“But it was just Barney and Kerry who dived to the wreck?”
“Yeah. John and I stayed on the boat with Kerry’s friend, Carol Janes.”
“Carol who?”
“Janes. The future Mrs. Tozer.” Trathen took a deep swallow of beer. “Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?”
SEVEN
F unny how things turn out.” Ray Trathen was right on the money there as far as Harding was concerned. Carol had been on the boat when Kerry Foxton met with her fatal accident. And Carol had been Kerry’s friend before she became Barney Tozer’s wife. She had never mentioned any of this to Harding. She had never breathed a word to him. Maybe she had reckoned he was unlikely to hear of it. Maybe Barney had as well, though he had certainly tempted fate by asking him to go to Penzance: Whatever their calculations, Harding had heard of it now.
Extracting as many details as he could from Trathen had
been a delicate exercise. He had not wanted to admit why he was so interested in the part Carol had played in events. Nor had he wanted to reveal Hayley’s role as his informant for fear of causing trouble for her. That consideration had prevented him from probing the question of the switched video. It was hard to imagine it contained anything other than the material Metherell had recorded on the day of the accident. But it was, evidently, not the original. Trathen had referred in passing to that still being in Metherell’s possession.
So, what was the long and short of Trathen’s account of the accident and the background to it? Harding asked himself that question as he walked back to the Mount Prospect through the soft, dank Penzance evening. Kerry Foxton, freelance journalist, proclaiming an interest in the total eclipse of 11 August 1999, arrived in Cornwall from London a couple of weeks beforehand. She spent half her time with her college friend, Carol Janes, on St. Mary’s, where Carol was running a café in Hugh Town, and the other half on the mainland, mostly in Penzance, where Starburst International maintained an office-later closed when its fish-farming interests were disposed of. Barney Tozer was at the time living in a big house near Marazion with a succession of short-stay girlfriends, though he was as often as not abroad on business. Kerry contacted Trathen, then on the Starburst payroll, to suggest profiling his boss. Trathen recommended the idea to Tozer, who agreed and immediately took a shine to Ms. Foxton. She already knew the Association story and he had the means to arrange a dive to the wreck. John Metherell obtained the necessary permit and hired a boat and crew for the trip. Though no diver himself, he was keen to go along in order to visit the stretch of ocean where the subject of his book had gone down.
The party set off from Hugh Town, St. Mary’s, in ideal weather, on Friday, 6 August. They cruised out to the Western Rocks and stopped at the dive site near the Gilstone. Metherell videoed the preparations, then Tozer and Kerry went down. None of those left on the boat thought there was anything wrong until Tozer surfaced, saying he had become separated from Kerry and was worried she was in difficulties. He went down again, returning about ten minutes later, holding Kerry limp in his arms. They hauled her aboard and found she was not breathing. Tozer could not say how long she had been in that state. He had found her half in and half out of the wreck. Alf Martyn got her breathing again, but she was still unresponsive. There was a lot of panic. Trathen had only a confused recollection of the fast and bumpy ride back to St. Mary’s. Martyn radioed ahead for help. There was an ambulance waiting for them when they reached Hugh Town. They stood on the quay watching it speed off to the island hospital. Kerry was flown to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth later that day. Trathen for one never saw her again.
The police made desultory enquiries, but never seemed to think it was anything other than an accident. Kerry’s air-supply hose had been pierced, presumably by contact with the wreck, draining her oxygen cylinder before she could surface. The equipment belonged to Tozer, who claimed it was in good condition. But then he would, as Ray Trathen saw it. The whole venture was risky, according to local divers, who reckoned twin cylinders with separate hoses a must for wreck penetration. Tozer countered by saying penetration had never been the plan. They were just going to take a look. Kerry must have decided to go in alone, knowing he would try to stop her. Ultimately, that was the coroner’s conclusion. In effect, it was all her own fault.
Trathen never went along with that and, to hear him tell it, his doubts on the issue were why Tozer eventually sacked him. Harding suspected he had voiced those doubts only after being sacked. Tozer wanted out of Cornwall. Trathen was just part of the baggage he discarded in the process.
As to Tozer’s relationship with Carol Janes, there too Trathen was sceptical. He thought it might have begun before the accident. Maybe Carol was an accomplice in sabotaging Kerry’s equipment. The hose could have been tampered with, causing it to blow under pressure. If Carol did aid and abet her friend’s murder, her reward was a marriage of convenience and a share in Tozer’s fortune. Trathen had no evidence to back any of this up, of course. It was just the kind of slanderous nonsense an aggrieved former employee-and alcoholic to boot-would come up with. He claimed EU auditors had started asking awkward questions in the months before the accident about the use Starburst had made of lucrative development grants. But he could not prove Kerry Foxton was on the trail of the scandal, if scandal it was. The auditors were still sniffing around when Trathen was sacked. What they subsequently uncovered, if anything, he had no idea.
Trathen admitted the police had studied Metherell’s video without noticing anything suspicious. He did not mention his interest in Gabriel Tozer’s video collection, however. Nor did Harding. Neither was being completely honest with the other.
Carol’s abrupt transition from Kerry Foxton’s friend to Barney Tozer’s wife left a bad taste in Harding’s mouth, though, there was no denying it. She had always said they had met when Barney strolled into her café in Hugh Town one day. That now looked at best a distortion, at worst a lie. They had married in Cannes only a few months later, while Kerry was still lingering on life support in a hospital bed in England. The Foxton family had insisted on keeping her alive long after all hope of recovery had faded. According to Trathen, she had finally died sometime in 2003. The inquest had been held in October of that year.
Harding was already acquainted with the Tozers by then, although his affair with Carol had not yet begun. Barney’s fleeting return to Penzance to give evidence had presumably been camouflaged as yet another business trip. Nothing had been said about its real purpose, least of all to Harding. It was as if it had never happened.
Talking to Carol again after suddenly learning so much about her that he had never known before was a daunting prospect. Harding had turned off his phone before entering the Turk’s Head and found himself hoping there would not be another message from her when he turned it back on.
There was not. For a simple reason, as he discovered halfway back to the Mount Prospect: his phone was no longer in his pocket.
It was not being kept for him behind the bar at the Turk’s Head. No one had handed it in. Recalling his encounter with the supposedly drunken Darren, Harding started to feel queasily certain that it had been stolen from him. Darren was long gone, of course. His surname was Spargo, according to the barmaid. He stacked shelves in one of the supermarkets on the edge of town. Tesco or Morrison’s. She could not remember which. Neither could any of the locals. Trathen had moved on too, perhaps, it was thought, down the road to the Admiral Benbow.
But Trathen was not in the Admiral Benbow. And Harding doubted it would have helped a lot if he had been. The dismal truth was that tracking down Darren Spargo was unlikely to achieve anything. Harding could not prove he had stolen his phone. Maybe young Darren was in the habit of topping up his weekend drinking and clubbing fund with the odd opportunistic phone theft.
Or maybe, which was a far more disturbing thought, it had not been opportunistic at all.
EIGHT
Harding was woken by the bedside telephone early the following morning.
“Call for you from a Mrs. Tozer, sir,” the receptionist announced. “Will you take it?”
“Sure. Put her through.”
“Tim?”
“Carol. Hi.”
“What the hell’s going on? Your mobile seems to be permanently switched off.”
“Ah. Does it?”
“Well?”
“I’m afraid it was stolen last night. Some pick-pocket helped himself to it in a pub.”
“What?”
“Simple as that. I’m sorry to say.”
“But I left-” Harding heard her sigh. “Couldn’t you have been more careful?”
“I wish I had been.”
“How am I going to keep in touch with you now?”
“Call me here. You’d better tell Barney that as well. Say I phoned you.”
“When were you going to, exactly?”
“Soon, of course. I suppose I
was hoping…” He rubbed his eyes, which were still not focusing properly. “Never mind.”
“Has anything else gone wrong?”
“No. I’ve seen the ring. Nice-looking piece. There’ll be no problem. I’ll fly home on Wednesday, as planned. I got your message about Thursday.”
“And?”
“I’ll be all yours.”
Harding had surprised himself by the extent to which he was prepared to mislead Carol. Staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he shaved, he acknowledged the deceit inherent in just one of the phrases he had uttered. “There’ll be no problem.” In truth there already was a problem. Indeed, there were several. And they seemed to be multiplying.
He was paged during breakfast. Mr. Tozer was on the telephone now. He took the call in reception.
“You want to watch those Cornish,” chortled Barney. “They’ve had to diversify since wrecking went out of fashion.”
“I’m glad you’re amused.”
“Other people’s misfortunes are always a hoot. Lose your wallet as well, did you? What about your passport?”
“It was just the phone.”
“Oh, well, not so bad, then. How’s it going at Heartsease?”
“Fine. Your friend Isbister doesn’t seem to think there’ll be much competition for the ring. It should be a doddle.”
“And Humph’s happy to let you deal with it?”
“Content, certainly.” Strictly speaking, Harding supposed he should have checked on Humphrey’s state of mind since his visit to Heartsease. But, then, why should the man not be content?
“Plain sailing, then?”
“Looks like it.”
“Take the day off from my family, Tim. Relax. Pretend you’re a tourist.”
“Yeah. Good idea.”
***
Unaccountably, Harding did feel relaxed as he made his way down to the railway station later that morning. Patches of blue were breaking through the grey hummocked clouds. It was almost warm when the wind dropped. He had been to St. Ives with Polly of course. It had been an obvious place to go from Penzance. But he did not feel remotely morbid about returning there. Hayley’s company-and the intriguing question of where and when they had met before-would keep his memories of that day at bay.
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