by W. Soliman
“Does seem like a little more than coincidence,” was all I trusted myself to say.
“Yes, I agree.” Hal’s expression was sombre. “And things have gone from bad to worse. We had a practise session arranged off Cowes with another team last weekend but Simon and Dave both went down with stomach bugs at the eleventh hour and we had to back out. Paul wasn’t affected but they recently changed the rules and it’s not possible to race with only one pilot on board.”
“Did Paul know about the rule change?”
“He didn’t even suggest racing alone, so I guess he must have. Anyway, it didn’t go down well with the other team when they’d made a special effort to be there. Besides, it made us look unprofessional.” Hal grimaced. “We’ve rearranged it for Torquay in a couple of weeks’ time. I just hope to hell that we make it this time. We won’t get another chance and we need the practise.”
“Who do you think would want to do this to you and why?” I asked. Anything involving Paul interested me. “One of your competitors, perhaps, jealous of your fast rise up the ranks?”
“No, Charlie, I don’t think so.” Hal stood with his back to us, staring at the river but probably not seeing it. “The sport is fiercely competitive and growing in stature all the time, but we respect one another’s outfits and would never deliberately seek to sabotage them.”
“A dissatisfied team member then?”
“No, nothing as simple as that.” Hal shook his head emphatically. “I haven’t been able to come up with anyone who’d have a reason to go to such extremes.”
“Has anyone joining the team coincided with the onset of these problems?”
“No, we haven’t taken on anyone new for a couple of years.”
“Okay.” So much for my fledgling theory about a mole in the camp. “Has anyone left under a cloud then?”
“No again.” Hal dredged up a half smile. “I’ve gone through all the most likely scenarios myself and drawn a complete blank.” His eyes were flat and hard. “I have no idea who would want to do this to me, or why, but when I find out…”
His words trailed off but then he didn’t really need to say any more. I was in no doubt that when the identity of the guilty party became known, retribution would be swift and brutal.
“How long has Paul Flint worked for you?” I asked.
“More than three years now.”
“I didn’t realise it had been that long. How do you keep him in line?”
Hal turned to look at me again and this time his fierce expression was replaced with a sympathetic smile. “I know you don’t have a high opinion of your stepbrother, Charlie, but he’s passionate about the sport and is a very good Logistics Manager.”
“Logistics Manager? I thought you said he was your reserve pilot.”
“He is but that doesn’t mean he can’t do something else as well.” Hal shrugged. “He has to if he wants to stay with me. I can’t afford to carry passengers. He’s responsible for moving the whole circus from one venue to the next.”
“And moving with it, presumably.” Which would explain why he hadn’t been at home when I’d tried to reach him there.
“Yes, he likes the locations and the glamour associated with the sport, there’s no denying that, but all he really wants is to drive the boat. He’s totally single-minded about that, and it’s what keeps him on the straight and narrow. He knows that if he pisses me off then he’ll be out in the cold. Pilot’s jobs are competitively sought after and I doubt if any other team would take him on.”
“I think you said earlier that they have to be licenced?”
“Oh yes, the governing body have a strict policy about that. Each pilot has to have competed in a specific number of races before he can apply for a licence to compete in the Grand Prix.”
“And Paul has?”
“Yes, some years ago he put money of his own into a fledgling team on the proviso that he could drive for it.”
I nodded thoughtfully. A lot of things were starting to make sense to me now. Not only the question of where Marianne’s money had gone but very possibly where the bulk of my father’s dosh had finished up too.
“It proved to be a disaster. Paul totalled the boat, his team ran out of money and that was when he came to me.”
“Has he learned from the experience? Will he ever make it?”
Hal shook his head. “He’s too impulsive and tries too hard, which almost always ends in tears. It’s an intangible skill having the ability to drive a boat at over 120 miles an hour. You either have an intuitive sixth sense to excel at it or you don’t. Having nerves of steel isn’t enough. I’ve been straight with him and told him that he doesn’t have what it takes but he’s determined to prove me wrong.” Hal shrugged. “And if things carry on the way they’re going, I might lose my driver and throttleman to another team anyway and he’ll get his chance. Experienced pilots with decent track records are few and far between and therefore highly sought-after. They won’t stay with me if I can’t enhance their reputations.”
“Then surely that’s your explanation. Paul’s trying to get the team a bad reputation so that he’ll get to be the new glamour boy.”
“You’re letting your dislike of your stepbrother cloud your judgment, Charlie,” Hal said. “To be fair, the thought did cross my mind too, but it can’t have been him. Even if he did somehow manage to divert those emails there’s no way he could have done the fuel thing. He was fifty miles away at the time. And he has nothing to do with ordering spares so that can’t have been him either.”
I wasn’t convinced but let it pass. “How did he come to work for you in the first place?”
“He totalled that boat at about the time when I was setting up my team. Your father rang me and asked me to give him a trial as a driver.”
Of course he did. “I see. And did you? Give him a trial, I mean.”
“Sure, but like I said, it was obvious that he’d never make it. I offered him the reserve seat and the opportunity to be our logistics man instead, and he’s proving to be quite good at the latter.”
“Have you thought about tightening security?” I asked, attempting to push the thorny question of Paul aside until I’d had time to think it through.
“How?” Hal scratched his head. “The things that have happened have all been in different areas of the operation and could almost be construed as coincidence.”
“But you don’t think they are?”
“No, I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Hal is really worried that someone’s going to wreck the show,” Gloria said, covering one of my hands with hers. “Everyone seems to know that things aren’t going right for us, even though we’ve tried to keep it from them, and there’s lots of tension and dissatisfied rumblings in the ranks. It doesn’t exactly make for team unity. We need them to be focused and pulling in the same direction, not looking at one another with suspicion and sniping behind each other’s backs, which is what’s starting to happen.”
“I’m not surprised. Bad news always has a way of leaking out.”
“We really had a chance to make it this year,” Hal said. “We could certainly have won several races. But now I’m not so sure.”
“What are we thinking of,” Gloria said, smiling at Cleo, who’d been following the conversation with interest but hadn’t contributed to it. “Poor Cleo must be bored rigid.”
“Not at all.”
“Well, no more shop and that’s an order,” Gloria said, wagging a finger at Hal and me.
“It doesn’t matter on my account,” Cleo said. “I can see that Hal values Charlie’s opinion.”
“Perhaps, but he’s not being fair, putting him on the spot like this. Charlie’s supposed to have retired from sleuthing.”
Cleo flashed me a guilty smile. “He likes to keep his hand in.�
��
Gloria chuckled. “Come along, Cleo. You and I are going to make ourselves beautiful and then we’ll have dinner.”
Nothing more was said about the team’s problems that night. But when Hal casually mentioned over dinner that they’d all be at the party tomorrow, I knew he wanted me to question them and see if I could come up with an explanation for his troubles. And because there was a chance that Paul was involved, I knew I’d do precisely that.
Chapter Nine
“Do your sleuthing powers get called into play wherever you go?” Cleo asked as we slipped into bed that night.
“Yeah, it happens all the time.”
She laughed. “How do the police cope without your help?”
“I’ve often wondered that myself.” I tried for a modest expression. “It’s a bit like going to a party and admitting you’re a doctor, I suppose. Everyone just kind of assumes you won’t mind them running their symptoms past you.”
“Which is what Hal did tonight?”
“Yeah, but in his case I don’t mind at all.”
I pulled her into my arms and kissed her, attempting to distract her. I didn’t want to get into that right now. Besides, it would be a pity to waste the opulent comfort of the bed in Hal’s principal guestroom with unnecessary talk.
“But do you really think your stepbrother would resort to sabotage?” Cleo asked, returning to the subject of Hal’s team as soon as I gave her the opportunity to speak again.
“Nothing would surprise me about Paul. But—”
“But what?” She leaned up on one elbow and looked at me intently, as though my answer really mattered to her.
“It pains me to say so but I think on this occasion he might be a convenient scapegoat.”
That surprised me. I hadn’t realised my thoughts were veering in that direction. I don’t have a particularly high opinion of mankind in general. Hardly surprising after twenty years of the shit I’ve had to deal with. Being cynically minded, I think the worst of everyone, especially Paul. But I also try to be fair. Paul is many things but he’s not stupid. If he wanted to bite the hand that feeds him he’d have found a way to do it without the finger of suspicion pointing his way.
“He’s being set up?”
“Possibly, but hell if I know who by.”
“And I suppose you’re going to try and find out.”
“I’ll see what I make of things at the party. Talk to a few people, for Hal’s sake. But that’s it.” It would suit me to clear Paul and have him indebted to me for a change. “But it won’t distract me from your father’s case. Honest, ma’am.”
“See that it doesn’t,” she said, wagging a finger beneath my nose.
I sucked that finger into my mouth, flipped her onto her back and held her there. By then we’d both lost the desire for conversation, and a different sort of need took precedence. It was quite a while before I let her get some sleep. And a lot longer still before I drifted off myself. I stared at the patterns dancing across the ceiling, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Sex with Cleo was dynamite but I’m ashamed to say that I spent much of the time whilst engaged in the act, imagining I was with Kara, my friend and previously intimate acquaintance who lived in my house with her nephew and niece. I was stunned by the path my subconscious had taken me down. Up until that point I hadn’t realized how much I missed Kara’s company.
The following morning Gloria assured me that the preparations for the party wouldn’t be disruptive. But when a massive marquee was dragged onto the lawn by a posse of burly men, I figured she was being overoptimistic. I’d either be roped in to help or would just be in the way. I left Cleo and Gloria, heads together, getting on like they’d been friends for years as they discussed stuff I didn’t even pretend to understand. Gil and I headed for the relative safety of the boat and waited for Mike to turn up and repair the stern gland.
“This looks like a clean break.” Mike held up one end of the bolt in question. “You were lucky that it didn’t give when you were farther out.”
I didn’t reply. It clearly hadn’t occurred to Mike that someone had sabotaged my boat and I didn’t want to get into that with him. But I’d been thinking about little else since the incident occurred. How had it been done? Brighton Marina isn’t exactly Fort Knox but it does have some security so a stranger hanging around the No Comment would stand out like a gentile in a synagogue. Said stranger would also have had to pick a time when Gil and I weren’t on board and have enough knowledge about boats to know which bolt to loosen without me spotting it when I did my engine room checks.
Peter Garnet was the obvious candidate but he never did his own dirty work. That was where the guy following me earned his crust. Presumably he reported when I wasn’t aboard and your local boat saboteur was in business. Except he’d not done a thorough enough job. Garnet knew I was going to France because I’d helpfully informed his wife of my plans, so presumably the bolt was supposed to give way when I was mid-Channel.
In such a busy shipping lane as the English Channel, help would have been close at hand and the saboteur would know I’d be rescued. It was against maritime law not to go to the aid of a vessel in distress if she put out a Mayday. But the bolt held almost all the way to Beaulieu, twice the distance, and if anyone was still keeping tabs on me they’d know I’d arrived without putting out a call for help.
It was probably intended as a warning. Keep out of my business if you know what’s good for you. I must have struck a nerve, stumbled across something significant.
There was just one problem with that theory. I was buggered if I knew what it was.
I was still mulling it over after Mike left when another possibility hit me like a tidal wave. Perhaps the person behind this knew I wasn’t going to France. I felt the bile rising in my throat. My beloved stepbrother would have been aware that I was on Hal’s guest list. Gloria would have told Brenda, who in turn would warn her son. Paul knew I wanted to ask him about that money Marianne loaned him. Was he so desperate to avoid that confrontation that he’d try and stop me getting here? Being involved with Hal’s team, he’d certainly have the necessary knowledge to do the dirty. And he lived in Brighton.
Peter Garnet or Paul Flint? I needed to find out which.
Cleo joined me just after I’d given Gil his afternoon walk. We’d be sleeping on board tonight because Gloria needed all the space in the house for other guests who were staying over. After I showered, I changed into the only smart trousers I possessed and a fancy shirt Kara had coerced me into buying for some do she’d taken me to. Then I sat in the salon with a drink, waiting for Cleo.
The wait proved to be worth it. She was wearing a dress that finished just above her knee. In a shade of mid-blue that suited her colouring, it was sculpted to her body and showcased her remarkable legs. Not an ounce of cleavage was on show but it looked much classier because of that. Some sort of black pencil outlined her eyes, the lids of which were all sparkly, and her full lips were painted a deep burgundy colour. I let my eyes rove slowly over her body and whistled.
“Why thank you, sir.” She gave me a twirl.
“Just remember that you’re all mine tonight,” I said, slipping an arm round her waist and giving it a squeeze. “I don’t want you getting any fancy ideas about those glamorous speedboat pilots.”
She pouted. “Only for tonight, Charlie?”
“Well, if you’re a very good girl, I suppose we could stretch it to two.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” she said, teasing her lower lip between her teeth as she pretended to think about it. I figured she’d end up with burgundy-coloured teeth but her lipstick stayed right where it was supposed to be. How do women do that?
“That’s me,” I agreed, tweaking her nose. “Hard as nails.”
“And I thought I was about to embark upon a glamorous life, mixi
ng with millionaires and all.”
“You’d get seasick.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” she said, grimacing.
“Come on then, let’s get this thing over with.”
“Aren’t you looking forward to it?” she asked as I took her hand to help her to step ashore.
“Parties aren’t really my thing.”
Nor was confronting my stepbrother but I refrained from saying so. As soon as Cleo’s feet touched the pontoon, she donned a pair of shoes that had to have four-inch heels. They did wonders for her already spectacular legs but they’d probably cripple her within an hour.
“Won’t you lose all feeling in your feet?”
“The torture we women put ourselves through just to make an impression.” She sighed. “You have no idea.”
I chuckled. “Well, on behalf of mankind in general, I want you to know that your efforts haven’t gone unappreciated.”
She linked her arm through mine and we strolled across to the house with ten minutes to spare before the guests were due. I barely recognised the place. A team of caterers was bustling about with platters of food, a bar had been set up in the marquee and, worryingly, a live band with monstrous-sized speakers was also making itself at home. A series of tables was set with shimmering white cloths and sparkling crystal glasses. Fresh flowers were absolutely everywhere, filling the place with a delicate perfume.
Gloria had overseen all the arrangements and must have felt knackered before the event even got underway. Even so, she still managed to look fresh and sensational in a floaty red chiffon number. I told her so.
“Ah, thank you, Charlie, and you don’t look so bad yourself.” Her eyes flickered toward Cleo. “But neither of us can hold a candle to Cleo.”
“Thanks,” Cleo said, looking embarrassed.
“Hope it isn’t black tie,” I said, glancing at Hal, who was in full monkey-suit attire, “because this is about as formal as I get nowadays.”
“No, you’re fine.” She walked the length of the marquee with us, chattering about nothing in particular, casting a critical eye over everything we passed. Every so often she stopped to make an adjustment or issue a quietly spoken instruction to one of the caterers.