‘How do you know that about Cotleigh?’ demanded Marvik.
‘Because I was there when they both died. Or rather, let me re-phrase that, I was still at Southampton Polytechnic. Jack Darrow died just before the end of the strike, probably about a day or two after that picture was taken and Joseph Cotleigh’s body was found on a beach in early February.’
‘Where?’ asked Marvik, his antenna twitching.
‘On the south coast somewhere. Suicide. He’d helped himself to union funds.’
‘I thought that was what Jack Darrow was supposed to have done.’
‘They probably split it between them.’
‘Did Cotleigh have any relatives?’
‘I’ve no idea. Now I have to get back.’ He stared at Marvik as though expecting him to leave but Marvik made no effort to move. Again he held out the photograph. ‘Which one is Redburn?’
‘Him, of course – the man between me and Gordon.’
So Freynsham had been telling the truth on that score. But he’d withheld information about Cotleigh being dead. He must have known that. Or perhaps he really had got down to his studies after Oscar had vanished as he’d claimed and blotted out everything else.
‘That’s all I can tell you,’ Brampton snapped.
Marvik left a short pause, then nodded. Brampton faltered for a moment before brushing past Marvik and walking briskly along the corridor. Marvik watched him go. When Brampton reached the large conference room he turned and Marvik saw his worried stare before he swung back and almost bumped into the woman in the red jacket. They exchanged brief words, which to Marvik didn’t look that cordial, before Brampton entered the conference room and the woman headed towards Marvik.
‘Fancy a drink?’ she asked, smiling at him.
‘Not really.’
‘Pity. You look far more interesting than those stuffed shirts.’ She retraced her steps and pushed open the door to the ladies’ cloakroom.
Any other time he might have accepted. She was mid-thirties, dark-haired with deep brown eyes and a very good figure. But his thoughts were preoccupied with Sarah. Besides, he needed to stay here to see what Brampton did next because it was clear he’d been unnerved by Marvik’s visit.
He took a seat at the rear left-hand side of the lobby where he had a clear view of the entrance. Brampton had given him some interesting additional information. How much of it had Sarah discovered? Had she traced Brampton? He didn’t think so. Was this connected with Pulford showing up in Swanage in 1989? Marvik hadn’t asked Brampton if he recognized the name – maybe he should have done. And he hadn’t forgotten the fact that Joshua Nunton had been reported missing shortly after Pulford. But did they have anything to do with Oscar Redburn and Jack Darrow or had he and Strathen stumbled on another crime that had no connection with the Killbecks, Bradley Pulford and the body that had been washed up on the Isle of Wight in January?
His head was spinning with it all and thudding with fatigue, the pain exasperated by his injury sustained in conflict. He massaged his temples, blinking several times, and then focused his eyes and reached for a strip of tablets in his jacket pocket. He’d swallowed two of the strong painkillers when, suddenly alert, he saw Brampton emerge from the corridor and exit the hotel. He didn’t even bother to look at the lobby.
Marvik rose and followed but at a safe enough distance not to be spotted. Brampton headed across the concourse and out into Westminster Bridge Road where after a few paces he turned right down on to the South Bank. It was busy with commuters and tourists and Marvik weaved his way through them keeping Brampton, dressed in a black overcoat and carrying a black leather computer case, in his sights. It had stopped raining and the early evening lights were coming on in buildings that lined the Thames. Brampton was heading for the Royal Festival Hall. Marvik suspected he could be making for Waterloo station and home, wherever that was, but if he was then he had left the conference drinks party early, certainly before anyone else. Perhaps he had another engagement or was under orders to get home for an early dinner. Perhaps he’d grown bored with his fellow delegates. But Marvik’s instinct told him there was something not right about Brampton and that his rapid exit from the drinks party had been prompted by his visit.
Brampton halted in front of Foyles bookshop and retrieved his phone. It must have rung. Marvik hung back. He expected Brampton to walk on with the phone pressed to his ear but instead he crossed to the river. Marvik watched a bulky man in his forties wearing dark clothes and a baseball cap rammed low on his face rise from one of the seats facing the river and cross to Brampton’s side. Brampton still had his phone to his ear and now his lips were moving but Marvik didn’t think he was taking any call. His conversation was directed at the bulky man beside him who didn’t look at Brampton but stared out across the river. Marvik saw the bulky man’s lips move. Marvik retrieved his pay-as-you-go phone and took a couple of photographs, then watched Brampton replace his phone in his coat pocket and head on towards the National Theatre.
The bulky man turned in the same direction and Marvik set off after him. He saw Brampton turn up alongside the National Theatre in the direction of Waterloo station but the other man continued onwards. Strathen would be able to discover where Brampton lived, if Crowder wouldn’t tell them, and Marvik was very curious to know who this man was – the one that Brampton didn’t want to be seen with.
But suddenly the man swung left and with surprise Marvik saw him entering Festival Pier. Marvik hurried further along the Embankment where he halted and looked back over the river to see him climb into a waiting motor launch. The man at the helm was leaner and slightly taller – about mid-thirties, wearing a black waterproof jacket under a buoyancy aid. He also had a black baseball cap rammed on his head. Marvik made like a tourist and took a couple of photographs. There was no name on the side of the motor launch, and as it swung out into the Thames and headed towards Blackfriars Bridge, no name on the rear of it either.
Turning back, Marvik caught a glimpse of a woman in a red jacket hurrying away from him. Troubled, he made his way to Waterloo station. There was no sign of Brampton on the crowded platform. Perhaps he’d already got on board a train or he might be in one of the shops or cafés. Marvik wasn’t going to look. He caught the first train to Twickenham and found his Land Rover Defender where he’d parked it. Scanning the area, he couldn’t see anything suspicious, but he checked under the vehicle to be on the safe side and then under the wheel arches to make sure there was no tracking device on it. It looked clean. He’d have to chance it. He headed for Hamble.
THIRTEEN
‘OK, so we’ve got a number of questions,’ Strathen said as they sat in what he called the operations room of the ground-floor apartment in the Grade II-listed whitewashed house that bordered Southampton Water. It was a stone’s throw from Hamble marina and situated at the end of a property-free, tree-lined road surrounded by landscaped gardens. Marvik remembered the last time he and Strathen had sat here discussing one of Crowder’s missions. It had only been a month ago and his thoughts returned to the woman who had been with them – Helen with her purple hair. But it was the scarred tissue on her wrists that he now remembered rather than the colour of her hair and her forthright manner. Behind the latter had been a vulnerability like Sarah’s. They’d both had a tough time, Helen with her sister’s murder and Sarah with her father’s disappearance. He’d let Sarah down and perhaps by leaving Helen to go off alone he’d also let her down. He told himself the mission had been accomplished, they’d found who had killed Helen’s sister and that was all that mattered. Helen wasn’t his responsibility. But he’d like to know where she was and what she was doing. He hoped she was OK.
He returned his thoughts to the present. He’d parked his car next to Strathen’s Volvo in the private car park at the rear of the grounds. No one had followed him from Twickenham and there had been no one watching the house. Strathen had cooked a curry while Marvik had showered and changed into some of Strathen’s clothes, which
were a good fit. The steaming hot jet of water had done something to invigorate him but he knew that fatigue would finally catch up with him and the hot food and warmth of the flat would speed it up.
Strathen said, ‘I’ve found five references to Cotleigh’s death. His body was discovered washed up on the beach at Chale Bay on the Isle of Wight on the second of February 1979. Yeah, not far from where Bradley Pulford’s body was found at Freshwater Bay in January. A case of history repeating itself?’ Strathen took another fork of curry and continued. ‘Cotleigh was reported missing by his landlady on the twenty-sixth of January, three days after Jack Darrow’s body was found in that cargo hold, but Cotleigh could have been missing before then and no one noticed. His body was discovered by a walker eight days after his landlady had reported him missing, so you can imagine the state of it.’
Marvik could. He’d seen many corpses – or rather their remains after the sea had claimed them.
Strathen continued, ‘Decomposition and the sea life must have made good inroads into it. Death by drowning is about all I can gather from the press reports. No relative was quoted so perhaps there wasn’t anyone but the coroner’s report will give me more. I’ve applied for access to it. Crowder could get it quicker than me but I don’t expect he’d ask for it.’
Marvik didn’t either. ‘So Cotleigh must have been identified by dental records.’
‘Probably. DNA testing wasn’t comprehensive then and I shouldn’t think there’d have been enough left to get fingerprints. Brampton was right when he told you about union funds going missing. The press story was that both men had conspired to cream off money given to the union by the Trades Union Council. One of the press articles suggested that Cotleigh had killed Darrow and then tried to abscond to France with all the money and had met his death accidentally. A pang of conscience wasn’t mentioned. Both he and Darrow were painted as evil scheming bastards.’
‘Which they might have been.’
Strathen nodded acquiescence. Then, after a moment, added, ‘On the other hand, they might have been squeaky clean and murdered, their deaths made to look like suicide and an accident.’
‘Oscar Redburn was in Lyme Regis with Freynsham on the twenty-first of January, or so Freynsham says. The next day Freynsham discovered from Linda that Oscar hadn’t returned.’
‘And she waited another day before reporting him missing.’ Strathen scowled up at the board where he had enlarged the picture of the five men in the photograph that Bryony had given them. ‘One of them goes AWOL and two end up dead.’
‘Was Redburn the killer? Did he run off with the funds?’
‘Maybe. And maybe, despite what the Killbecks say, he returned in 1989 as Bradley Pulford.’
‘But why as Pulford?’ Marvik said, puzzled, polishing off his curry.
Strathen shrugged. ‘There has to be a reason why he assumed that name, but I’m damned if I can find it. Yet …’ he added with a grim smile.
Strathen saw it as a challenge and so did Marvik. He said, ‘I wonder if the police have found where Sarah was staying and any further leads on her murder. What did she do for the rest of the day after we had breakfast together? I mentioned her to Adam and Matthew Killbeck and they seemed genuinely not to know of her. I don’t think she traced them. Was she followed back to her guest house? Or did she arrange to meet her killer? Maybe she knew him.’
‘Freynsham or Brampton?’
‘My money would be on Brampton. He’s smooth, successful and confident, and he has contacts judging by what I saw on the Embankment. One of those contacts might have taken her out if Brampton has something to hide about his involvement in that dock strike of 1979 and Darrow and Cotleigh’s deaths.’ Marvik had already relayed what Brampton had told him and given Strathen the photographs he’d taken on the South Bank. Strathen had enlarged them, printed them off and pinned them on the board alongside a circle with ‘Brampton’ written in it. Marvik could see the right-hand profile of the bulky man’s face and the narrow features of the man at the helm on the motor launch. He didn’t recognize them but he would if he saw them again despite the fact that they’d kept their hats low and neither had any distinguishing features. ‘Any ideas on who they might be?’ he asked.
‘Police? Intelligence? Or maybe a couple of crooks Brampton’s locked in with.’
‘The surveillance of Ben’s bedsit smacks of a professional organization. But not the torching of the house. That was your basic Molotov cocktail.’
‘You’re thinking there is more than one party involved?’
‘Aren’t you?’
Strathen nodded. But they still had no idea why.
‘Any more news on Ben?’ Marvik asked, taking a swig at his beer.
‘Not since I spoke to you earlier. I’ll check again later.’
Marvik returned his thoughts to Pulford. ‘Where does the real Bradley Pulford fit into all this?’ Strathen also had his name on the whiteboard in a circle, along with the year of his birth, 1939 and his death, 1959, and the manner of it – Singapore, accident on board the Leonora, with a question mark.
‘There were two coroners’ courts in Singapore then,’ Strathen said. ‘Prior to the early sixties the coroners were retired senior police inspectors who conducted the inquests. Even if I could get hold of the report though I don’t think it will tell us much more than the information I got from the Registry of Seamen and Shipping. The inquest was probably a formality. It looked like an accident. Maybe it was. But that doesn’t explain why a Bradley Pulford shacked up with the Killbecks in 1989, or why he ended up on the Isle of Wight beach, dead, in January this year. Perhaps we’ve been sidetracked by those five men from 1979 and they have nothing to do with this.’
It was an idea that had already occurred to Marvik. ‘I might think that if Sarah Redburn hadn’t been killed and Bryony Darrow hadn’t almost been fried alive,’ Marvik said wearily. He was too tired to think straight.
‘Let’s turn it in, Art. We’ll come at it fresh in the morning.’
Marvik drained his beer and stashed the dishwasher while Strathen rang the hospital.
‘No change,’ he announced, coming off the phone. ‘Bryony’s still there with Ben.’
Marvik retired to Strathen’s spare bedroom, the one Helen had slept in. He wondered why his thoughts kept returning to her. Perhaps it was the association that she too had been in danger like Sarah, except he hadn’t realized Sarah was in peril. If he had then he’d have made damn sure to protect her. And what about Bryony Darrow? Was he going to let her be killed? Not if he could help it, but aside from forcibly holding her he didn’t see what he and Strathen could do.
He switched off thoughts of the mission and mentally willed himself to sleep and to wake when ready, with no inner alarm clock to alert him from slumber this time. He’d let nature take its course, except someone had another idea. It felt as though he’d only been sleeping for a few minutes when Strathen was shaking him.
‘We need to leave,’ Strathen said urgently.
Marvik was up and out of bed in an instant, the result of years of training. As he threw on his clothes, Strathen, already dressed, said, ‘There are two men about to enter the grounds from the front and another one, probably two, coming in from the dinghy park to the south.’
Marvik grabbed his rucksack and followed Strathen into the operations room where he had already wiped clean the board. He picked up a bulky folder and his laptop and stuffed them into a bag. There was a rucksack at his feet which Marvik knew had already been packed in case of emergencies. The training never left you.
‘I’ve got sensors on the entrance and on the vulnerable points to the house – that is the dinghy park and behind the car park. No one’s entered by the latter yet. If there were three of them I reckon we could see them off but with four the odds are shortened, especially with this leg, and there could be another couple in a car further down the road.’
As he spoke Marvik followed him into the hall. ‘Could it be police?’
/>
‘It’s possible but they don’t usually come at three in the morning unless it’s a drugs bust, and I don’t think we should stop to find out.’
Marvik didn’t either. ‘Where’s our exit route?’
‘Below.’ Locking the door to his apartment, Strathen turned and jerked his head at the door to the right of the stairs, which clearly led to the basement. He unlocked it and then re-locked it from the inside and shot a bolt across. He took a small pencil torch from his pocket and Marvik did the same. They didn’t want to switch on the light and alert their intruders of their location by the betrayal of a beam of light under the door.
Silently and swiftly, Marvik followed Strathen down the stairs. Strathen tackled them awkwardly but expertly and rapidly. Marvik knew that Strathen would have several exit routes worked out. He’d hoped he’d never need them but this was the second time in just over a month they’d had to duck out and on both occasions because of a mission for Crowder and his National Intelligence Marine Squad. Maybe Strathen needed to move apartments, thought Marvik. He’d bought this one and established himself as a private intelligence security consultant after his discharge from the Marines. He could always sell up or let it, not that he needed the money and neither did Marvik. Both of them had inherited substantial amounts, but where to relocate? Marvik didn’t know where he wanted to be and maybe Shaun was happy to stay here.
The basement had been kitted out as a fitness centre. Marvik wondered if Strathen had organized that, and maybe he was the only occupant who used it.
Strathen said, ‘Fortunately this building was occupied by the US Marines in the Second World War and, knowing them as we do, Art, they’d make an escape route in case of bombing or invasion. All I had to do was locate it.’
He turned right into a labyrinth of corridors and then ahead was a gentle slope which led up to a hatch. It was unlocked. Reading Marvik’s thoughts, Strathen gave a wry grin. ‘I unlocked it from the outside a couple of days ago in case of emergencies. It’s fitted with an electronic sensor linked to my phone and computer – it hasn’t been tampered with but we go careful in case these guys really are smart alec buggers and have managed to disarm it without my knowledge.’
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