Hilary Bonner

by Braven

  “It’s all right, don’t worry, I drop things all the time,” Esther had reassured her. Karen remained unable to reconcile this rather homely image of Esther Hunter with that of local legend, the scarlet woman who had, without a care, stepped into the abandoned shoes of the wife whom her lover had almost certainly murdered.

  Then, just a few weeks after Richard Marshall had been released without charge, two things had happened. He and Esther took off without any farewells and without leaving a forwarding address, abandoning a debt-ridden Parkview in the hands of a local estate agent, and Karen’s father left her mother. How much that had been caused by her mother’s relationship with Richard Marshall, Karen did not know. Neither did she know if her father was even aware of the affair, if that was what it had been. He could not, however, have failed to notice Margaret Meadows’ descent into alcoholic depression at the time of Marshall’s arrest, and she had made little or no attempt to conceal what had sparked it off. Then, when Marshall had moved Esther Hunter into Parkview almost a year earlier there had been a similar bout of booze-fuelled depression, accompanied by loud drunken ramblings concerning Richard’s “betrayal”, and even references to that “whore next door.” You would have had to have been a fool not to realize what it was all about, and while Karen’s father had been all manner of things, he certainly had not been that.

  Karen eventually learned that her father had met another woman and was setting up home with her in Plymouth. She more or less picked that up from a mixture of local gossip and, as ever, from overhearing conversations, mostly on the phone between her mother and someone she guessed was a solicitor. Nobody actually told her anything. One day her father was living with her and her mother at Laurel House, and the next he was not. But then, communication was not a high priority in the Meadows household.

  And when she asked her mother where her father was, the reply was fairly typical.

  “Thinks he’s found a better offer, darling, but don’t worry, he’ll be back.”

  Colin Meadows never did return, however. For the first year or so of her parents’ estrangement he would turn up about once a month to see Karen, but she could not even remember a conversation with him worthy of the name. There was always a present, usually a book token, once a sweater at least a size too small, and once, out of the blue, and far more gratefully received, a quite acceptable secondhand bicycle.

  Then her father was killed in a car accident, along with the new woman in his life. And, strange though it may seem, Karen could not really remember how she reacted. Indeed, she could barely recall any reaction at all and she thought she must just have blotted it out. She remembered her mother telling her the grim news in quite a matter-of-fact way. It was the only time Karen ever heard her mother mention her father after he left home, except to pass on the arrangements for Karen’s meetings with him, which had in any case gradually become less and less frequent. Karen did not go to her father’s funeral, and could not even remember if she was given the opportunity to do so. Certainly nobody, least of all her mother, ever talked to her again about her father or the manner of his death, and she did not feel it was right, somehow, to ask. Instead Karen took her feelings inward. Something she did throughout her childhood and adolescence. Something she still bloody well did, she thought wryly.

  She was aware that she had never grieved for her father, and she didn’t know anymore whether or not she had ever loved him. She didn’t think she could have done. Not really. She had loved her mother, though—and still did, painfully so, a love now dogged by guilt—with all her faults and paradoxes. And maybe that is why she had never given anything emotionally to her father nor he to her. It almost seemed like a disloyalty to her mother.

  Margaret Meadows, as was her wont, reacted unpredictably to the unexpected death of her husband. She inherited Laurel House outright—Colin Meadows had failed to make another will following his estrangement from his wife and in any case his new partner had died with him—and the old Victorian villa, short on tender loving care as it had been for so long, was a big house in a sought-after location and turned out to be worth a considerable amount of money.

  Margaret Meadows sold the place at once and, in a way which might have seemed quite out of character, proceeded to handle her financial affairs extremely sensibly. She invested part of the proceeds of the sale of Laurel House in order to provide an income, and the rest she used to buy a small but pretty cottage in the village of Kingskerswell, where she and Karen then lived until Karen left home for college. Karen found herself observing, in that peculiarly detached way she had as a child, while her mother turned her entire life around. Margaret almost totally stopped drinking, joined the Women’s Institute, took up jam-making and ballroom dancing and found a charming widowed farmer to escort her around. She never married again, in spite of being asked to do so regularly by the farmer, and indeed it seemed as if the death of her husband gave her both the freedom and the will to live her life to the full.

  The depressions became fewer and further between and, no longer fuelled by excessive alcohol, seemed to be controllable. Karen remembered thinking that her mother might have made a rather fine actress. Certainly her ability to reinvent herself as a totally different human being proved to be considerable and, while her performance as a stalwart of village life was worthy of an Oscar, Karen never quite believed in it, even though it seemed to keep her mother happy. Indeed, those years at Kingskerswell were among the happiest in Karen’s life too. The changes both in her surroundings and in her mother’s behaviour were extraordinary.

  One thing did not change. They still never really communicated, never talked about anything important. Certainly Richard Marshall, and the mysterious disappearance of his wife and children, was never mentioned.

  Throughout the rest of that day Karen found her thoughts returning to the past. The very act of reopening the investigation into the disappearance of Clara Marshall and her children, which although never officially closed had effectively ended years previously, was a journey down memory lane. And by and large not a particularly pleasant one.

  Caught up in the buzz of it all, some time around six o’clock Karen suddenly remembered that she had arranged to meet Bill Talbot in the pub. She felt, however, that there was nothing further to learn from Talbot at that moment, and after such a long and traumatic day she really couldn’t face what she feared was sure to descend into a morose drinking session while Talbot relived his and the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary’s failings in the Marshall affair. So she called him to put off their meeting, pleading pressure of work which, as she suspected she would not be ready to leave the station until at least ten o’clock again that night, was actually more than just an excuse.

  The following morning brought a potential breakthrough. Just before 11 A. M. they got word back from Rolex. A brief report was faxed over from their UK headquarters in East Grinstead, which a beaming Phil Cooper brought into Karen’s office. The watch, serial number 765323, had been sold by Gavin of Inverness. Predictably, Mr. Gavin no longer had any records of his business, certainly not going back to the sixties. But it was beyond all reasonable doubt that the watch had been bought by Sean MacDonald and given to his daughter Clara. Its discovery adjacent to her body in that old sunken German U-boat was, Karen felt sure, already sufficient to identify the remains they had found.

  Karen punched her desk with the clenched fist of her left hand.

  “At last, Phil, at last,” she murmured.

  “I know, boss.”

  For a second or two Karen felt the past overwhelming her again. Then she gave herself a mental shaking. They actually had some evidence, at least enough to establish at last that they were dealing with a murder. They had something tangible after all this time, they had a victim. They had a body. This was no time for any kind of self-indulgence. This was the moment for which she and so many others had waited so long, this was a moment to be grasped with both hands. She must concentrate absolutely on the present and on ensuring that
some kind of justice was finally achieved on behalf of Clara Marshall and her children.

  Karen turned her full attention to the sergeant once more.

  “And Marshall? Do we know where he is, yet?”

  Cooper’s smile had broadened even more. “We certainly do, boss. Just got confirmation. He’s running a marina in Poole, not far from Bournemouth where he came from, of course. He calls himself Ricky Maxwell nowadays, like you said. Changed his name not long after he moved away from Torquay with that hairdresser woman, if you remember, boss.”

  Karen shot him a withering look. “Do you really think I could have forgotten, Phil?”

  “Sorry, boss.”

  Karen grinned.

  “Bit of an unfortunate change of a name really, wasn’t it? Maxwell. Later to be made notorious by Robert, one of the greatest villains in corporate history.”

  She got to her feet and strode purposefully towards the door, gesturing for Cooper to follow her.

  Outside in the incident room she called for attention, but she hadn’t really needed to do so. All eyes were on her as soon as she walked in. She was acutely aware of the quite heady atmosphere of suppressed excitement in the room.

  “Right, boys and girls,” she began. “We have every reason to believe that we have at last found the body of Clara Marshall. And we all know who our prime suspect is, do we not?”

  A murmur of assent rippled around the room.

  “OK!” Karen continued. “We also know where to find him. So…” She paused. A little bit of dramatic effect was all part of man management, she reckoned. “Let’s go get the bastard, shall we?”

  Her words were greeted with a brief cheer and a chorus of muttered “yes”es. Everybody in the force wanted Richard Marshall. The loudest shout of “yes” came from Phil Cooper. Karen shot him an appreciative glance. She liked his enthusiasm. Liked everything about the man, in fact.

  “I need two of you guys, Tompkins and Smiley.” She deliberately chose two of the older detective constables, long-serving men who were all too familiar with the history of the Marshall case. Then she turned to Cooper. “I’ll want you as well, Phil, plus two uniforms. Find out who’s available and make sure they’re young and fit just in case we need muscle. It wouldn’t really be Marshall’s style to resist arrest, but I’m taking no chances. The rest of you, just carry on. Let’s dig deep on this one. Marshall’s well capable of escaping our net. I don’t want him to be given the opportunity to do so. So let’s make sure we miss absolutely nothing—and I really do want all those old records gone through with a fine tooth comb.”

  This brought about the obligatory moans from the detectives assigned to the dreary task of dealing with the mountainous paperwork already compiled for the case. But Karen had the feeling they didn’t really mind that much. Not if the end result was locking up Richard Marshall.

  By the time she set off for Poole along with her designated team, Karen was wound up like a spring. She was excited and she was also nervous. It was so important that no mistakes were made, that nothing was allowed to go wrong. Her mouth felt dry. Cooper, a man known for his healthy appetite, produced a packet of ham sandwiches, no doubt prepared by his wife, and offered her one. Karen shook her head. She suddenly realized she had eaten nothing that day but she wasn’t hungry. And she knew she would not be able to eat until Richard Marshall was safely in custody. However, she gratefully accepted a few mouthfuls from the bottle of water Cooper passed to her. As she replaced the cap, her mobile phone rang. It was John Kelly.

  “Any news?” he asked.

  “Sorry, John, I’m in a meeting. I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you back.”

  She quickly pushed the end button on the phone.

  Kelly was not only that rare creature, a journalist whom she as a police officer could rely on, he was also one of the few men in the world whom she trusted. She was not, however, prepared to take the slightest risk with this operation.

  She didn’t want anybody outside her team knowing what was about to happen. The muscles at the back of her neck were so stretched and tense that they ached. This was a big big day for Karen Meadows.

  For a moment, though, she was overwhelmed by a feeling of great sadness. So pleased had she been to have obtained some constructive information on the Clara Marshall case that she had not really considered what it actually meant.

  There had been little doubt, almost from the beginning really, that Clara Marshall was no longer alive, and as the years had passed and there had been no word at all of either her or her children, any possibility of a different outcome had become less and less likely. But having little doubt and knowing were two different things. Maybe Karen, deep inside, had clung to some forlorn hope. And maybe Mac had too, even though the down-to-earth Scotsman would certainly deny it.

  Either way, suddenly they were dealing with facts. With evidence. With reality. And it was a blunt and brutal reality. Clara’s body had been found. It had been wrapped in a tarpaulin, bound in chains, and dumped at sea. Almost certainly the bodies of her children had been dumped along with hers. It was equally likely that they would never be found, that they had already been destroyed by the ravages of time and tide. Only freak circumstances had kept Clara’s remains in any discernible condition.

  Clara was dead. The only logical conclusion any police officer could have drawn from the case had finally been proven correct.

  They were on their way to a result. A much-longed-for result. But when she actually thought about the young woman whose tragic fate had cast a shadow over Karen’s entire career and that of so many others, her sense of anticipation left her. As did the triumph she had felt earlier.

  This case was about the destruction of young lives. About the most horrible kind of murder.

  They arrived at Heron View Marina in Poole at about two in the afternoon, pulling off the main road and driving into the impressive marina complex in the exclusive Sandbanks area, where houses with harbour views invariably sold for two million pounds or so. Looking around her at the waterside hotel and the blocks of luxury flats overlooking rows of moored boats, almost all of which absolutely screamed money, Karen reflected that it seemed Richard Marshall had fallen on his feet yet again. She planned to do her best to change all that.

  The sun was shining, and the water also shone, as did the sleek vessels slotted neatly around an extensive framework of jetties.

  The girl in the marina office, next to the chandlery on the far side of the hotel, seemed rather startled by their arrival, perhaps understandably enough.

  “We’re looking for Ricky Maxwell,” announced Karen, using Marshall’s assumed name.

  “Ricky?” The girl appeared to have been stunned into a kind of stupidity.

  “Yes, Ricky Maxwell,” replied Karen curtly. “That is what I said.”

  “Ricky?” the girl repeated. “Oh. Y-yes. Yes. He’s out there.”

  She gestured towards the far end of the framework of jetties. Karen narrowed her eyes and peered into the distance. The sun was shining directly into her face. She could not see anybody where the girl was pointing.

  “He’s fitting a new battery on Wessex Lady,” said the girl then, as if that explained everything.

  “Wessex Lady,” she repeated almost impatiently. “The big Fairline at the end. You probably can’t see him from here.”

  Karen nodded and turned to leave the office. At least it did not seem that Richard Marshall had attempted to do a runner yet. But then, she would not really have expected him to. Not yet, anyway. Not a cool customer like him.

  “Can I help at all?” asked the girl rather forlornly.

  “No thanks, love.” It was Phil Cooper who bothered to reply. Karen was now focused on one thing, and one thing only.

  “Phil, come with me,” she said. “And you, Tompkins. And you, Richardson,” she instructed, nodding towards the larger of the two young police constables whose services Cooper had acquired. Then she spoke to the second uniformed man: “You stay here
with the car, Brownlow, just in case, and Smiley, you stay here too. Just watch and wait. Take no chances. Right?”

  Without waiting for any response, and in anticipation of instant obedience, she took off along one of the jetties, her little entourage following in her wake. Once on her way out across the marina Karen was quickly able to spot Wessex Lady. The blue-and-white motor yacht was moored at the very end of the last jetty, as the girl in the office had indicated. But as they neared the vessel there was still no sign of anybody about. However, the boat’s canvas hood had been opened and partly pulled to one side, there was a toolbox on the cockpit floor and the trapdoor to the engine compartment stood open.

  Then, just as Karen was taking all this in, the top half of a big grey-haired man emerged from the engine compartment. He was directly facing Karen and her team and he saw them at once. He was carrying a large battery in both arms. Karen stared him straight in the face and was aware of a trapped expression flashing across his eyes, but it was gone so quickly that she was not even sure whether or not she may have been mistaken.

  “Richard Marshall?” she began formally.

  “Maxwell,” the man replied, his voice laconic. “My name is Ricky Maxwell.”

  Karen studied him for a moment, aware at once that the horrible fascination she had always had in him was still there. She had not actually met Marshall since her childhood, since she was fourteen, in fact, when he had finally moved away from Parkview with his girlfriend. Fleetingly, she wondered if he would recognize her. She had recognized him at once. But it was different that way round. He had been a grown man in his late thirties when she had last seen him, while she had been just a young teenager. Also, his photograph had frequently been in various newspapers, and she had seen it often enough in police files to be reminded regularly of his appearance.