Faraday 01 The Gigabyte Detective

by Michael Hillier

  “Right,” said the inspector, “let’s say she got past the entrance to the Dart and was moving into Start Bay - probably about two or three miles off-shore? There wouldn’t be much traffic about at that time of the evening, would there?”

  “I don’t remember what day of the week it was.”

  “Er - Thursday.”

  Shakespeare shook his head. “There wouldn’t have been nobody much at all. High tide on the Skerries ain’t a good time for fishing. Perhaps the odd crabber or two huggin’ the cliffs.” He thought a bit. “A nice night in early summer - but it were too late to make a daylight run down to Salcombe. I doubt if there were ‘alf a dozen boats in the whole bay.”

  “So,” said Paulson, “she throttles back somewhere off Stoke Fleming and decides to go out on deck for some reason. It was a calm night. What do you think happened next?”

  The coastguard shook his head. “Anything could have happened. Even on a calm day you get the odd wave - the wake of some large vessel passing out to sea - something like that. Those cruisers ain’t all that stable when they’re not under power. They got too much top hamper, you see.”

  “That sounds more than likely.” The policeman looked out across the wide bay, imagining the picture. “OK. An unexpected wave pitches the boat over when she’s not expecting it and tips the lady over the side.” A thought struck him. “Do these boats have safety rails?”

  Shakespeare snorted. “A single wire about eighteen inches above the deck, just where it would trip you up - worse than useless.”

  “Yes,” said Paulson, “I know the sort of thing. So - over she goes. By the time she’s come to the surface and sorted herself out, the boat’s twenty yards away and is chugging into the distance. She panics, shouts and swallows a lung-full of water. There’s no-one within a couple of miles to see her or hear her. She’s probably dead in a quarter of an hour. The boat chugs on in a straight line, more or less until it runs ashore. All perfectly reasonable - no foul play anywhere. How long before it ran ashore, do you think?”

  “Perhaps three to four hours.” The man looked a bit worried. “But by then the tide was starting to ebb and that would be carrying ‘er at the best part of a knot down the coast. And I would ‘ave said that the boat didn’t come ashore before three in the morning - about low tide.” He straightened up and looked at Paulson, slowly shaking his head. “No, I would ‘ave said that she fell overboard back the other side of the Dart - somewhere near Scabbacombe Head.”

  The inspector shrugged. “So - it happened earlier in the evening. Does that make any difference to my theory?”

  “I dunno.” The coastguard looked back out to sea. “There’s a lot more traffic at that time of day between the Dart and Torbay. It’s surprising nobody reported the cruiser travellin’ slow with no sign of anyone on board - like it was in trouble.”

  “Perhaps they did.”

  Shakespeare shook his head again. “I was on duty that night, monitoring the distress frequency. That’s ‘ow I come to be the man on call when the boat was reported aground.” He smiled briefly - a flash of sunshine across a grey sea. “They bloody fishermen chat away on the distress frequency all the time like a bunch of magpies. We don’t mind. We just orders ‘em to shut up whenever anything serious breaks.” He shook his head again. “They’d ‘ave been sure to report anything like a slow-movin’ cruiser. They ‘ates the things.”

  There was a pause while Paulson considered his comments. “All right, then,” he said at last, “so the timing doesn’t fit. Perhaps she went further out to sea. Perhaps she changed direction more than once. I guess we’ll never know the whole story.” At the end of another silence he turned back to the coastguard. “Now then, let’s get back to what it was like on the boat when you climbed aboard. Did you go down below?”

  “I went everywhere,” said the man, “trying to see if there was anyone on board.”

  “Did you go into the sleeping cabins?”

  “Of course.”

  “Were they tidy?” asked the inspector, “or would you say the beds had been used recently?”

  Shakespeare thought. “All the beds were made,” he said at last, “but the main one looked as though someone had lain on top of it. You know - the pillows was disturbed and the cover was creased.”

  “Think about this carefully,” said Paulson. “Would you say it looked as though one person had lain on the bed, or had there been two - perhaps having sex, or something like that?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his big head slowly. “I really couldn’t tell you that.”

  “And what about elsewhere on the boat?” asked the inspector. “Were there any signs of drinks glasses left around? Had any food been consumed? Were cushions disarranged in more than one place?”

  The man thought again. “There’s nothin’ that comes to mind,” he said.

  “Well,” said Paulson, “what was your general impression? Did you feel there had only been one person on board the previous evening or were there two?”

  Shakespeare turned his back on him and walked a few paces towards the roadway which ran up the hill. Paulson wondered for a minute if he’d upset him with his questioning. The man gazed up the steep hillside covered in rough grass and heather. At last he turned back to face the policeman. “I can’t be sure why I thought it,” he said, “but I had the idea there had been more than one person on board that boat earlier in the day.” He shook his head a little. “It may just be because it’s the sort of boat that a person don’t usually take to sea on their own. There’s something that made me think it had two people on board. But I just can’t think what it was.”

  Stafford took a deep breath and exhaled. “Well,” he said at last, “if the reason suddenly occurs to you, you know where I am. Now - just one more question. If someone had stayed on board until the boat ran aground, could he have jumped ashore easily enough and got away from the place without any trouble?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Shakespeare. “Slapton village is less than half a mile inland from where the boat ran aground. There’s a bus route along the top of the beach.”

  Nobody reported seeing anyone,” said Paulson. “But then, why should they? It could have been someone out for a walk. Who reported the boat running aground by the way?”

  “A couple of blokes who’d come down to the beach to do some long-line fishing. It’s a popular place for that sort of thing. They saw the boat was against the beach and leaning over on its side a bit. So they rang the police and they called us in, as they usually do when a boat’s involved.”

  Stafford Paulson had to be satisfied with that information to mull over as he drove back in the midday heat to the station.

  * * * * * * * *

  High on Dartmoor the long sunny week had come to an end. Low cloud had rolled in from the Atlantic, sagging heavily over the uplands, masking the tors and creeping up the shallow, marshy valleys. Visibility already was less than a hundred yards.

  Richard turned the car off the narrow moorland road into the deserted car park. The car crossed the bumpy surface until they came to a low bank which marked the edge of the parking area. He braked and switched off the engine.

  Susannah shuddered as she gazed out at the scene of desolation. “This mist came down so suddenly,” she said. “You can understand how people get lost when they’re out walking. Half an hour ago it was bright sunshine. Now you can hardly see across the car-park.”

  “When the weather’s like this it is very lonely.”

  “I’ve not been up here more than a couple of times in my life,” she said. “I always think of Dartmoor as a desolate place - a wild area away from normal civilisation. It’s a sort of back-drop to the rest of the county - it’s so bleak with no trees and no life - just a wet area of tors and bogs and escaped animals - a sort of area for old-fashioned outlaws and criminals.”

  “And yet,” Richard reminded her, “in prehistoric times it was the most densely populated area in the South West. At that time the coastal l
owlands were areas of deep forest inhabited by wolves and bears. The human population kept to the high land where they could move without being threatened and where they could build their enclosures and hut circles. It was the area where agriculture and early tin smelting began.” He waved an arm towards the invisible, mist-shrouded landscape. “Within a few hundred yards of where we are at this moment, you will find the remains of ancient buildings which have stood there undisturbed for thousands of years. I find that exciting. It appeals to something prehistoric in my nature.”

  She shivered again in her thin dress and pulled her stole over her unprotected shoulders. Although he had switched on the heater to keep her warm, the car was starting to cool quickly, now they were halted. “It may be all right up here on a sunny day,” she said, “but when the weather’s like this, I don’t find it exciting at all.”

  “But just think,” he grinned, “we’re surrounded by the ghosts of people thousands of years old.”

  “I don’t like that idea. Is that why you brought me up here?” she demanded, “to frighten me to death with some creepy story about being lost in the fog.”

  “That actually happened to me once,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We got stuck up on the moor when the mist came down like this.” He gestured out of the window. “We had to sleep out all night. It was probably only five miles or so from here.”

  “Whatever happened?” She shivered and pulled her stole closer round her shoulders.

  He released his seat-belt but continued to hold on to the steering wheel and gaze out at the desolate view. “I was only about sixteen or seventeen at the time. About half a dozen of us had gone cycling for the weekend. We stayed at the Youth Hostel near Postbridge - not far from here. One day we decided to walk to Cranmere Pool. That’s special because it’s supposed to be the centre of the Moor - the centre of Devon in a way. The Taw, Tavy and Dart rivers all rise in the same boggy area. The Taw flows out to the sea at Barnstaple, the Tavy at Plymouth and the Dart at Dartmouth of course. My best friend Edward - he was a slightly odd character but he and I were very close - had worked out that Cranmere Pool was only about six miles from the Youth Hostel. He thought we could easily get there and back in a day.”

  “Could you?” Susannah felt as though the telling of this story was important to him.

  “The trouble was that we were a bit slow in getting moving in the morning - you know what girls are like for getting ready.” He turned to look at her and laughed at the expression on her face. “So we finally left about ten. For the first few miles we followed the course of the River Dart and the going was all right. We stopped for lunch and then pressed on. But the ground started getting boggy. It wasn’t too bad, because it was August and the bogs had partly dried out, leaving tussocks of grass which would take our weight. But one of the girls stepped on to what she thought was dry mud and sank up to her knees. She made a fuss and refused to go any further.”

  He shifted in his seat and turned towards her “It was mid-afternoon and most of the others wanted to turn back. However Edward was insistent that he was going to carry on. I told you he was a bit of an queer bod. He that said he’d tried to walk to Cranmere Pool twice before and had to turn back each time, and he wasn’t going to be defeated a third time, even if he had to do it alone.” Richard moved a little closer. “Well, I didn’t really mind one way or the other, but I didn’t feel I could let him continue all on his own. So he and I said cheerio to the others, who turned back, and we carried on. I suppose we walked for another couple of hours. We got out of the boggy area and climbed up on to a long hill where we thought the ground would be drier. We were trying to work out exactly where Cranmere Pool was among the hills when, all of a sudden, it seemed to turn cold.”

  He was looking straight at her. Susannah felt her hair begin to prickle against her cardigan.

  “We looked round and noticed that the sun had disappeared. And there, advancing towards us across the moor, was a complete wall of mist. It seemed to roll over the rocks and swallow them up as it came. Within a few minutes we were completely surrounded. Luckily we were quite near a hill-top with a low clump of stones on it - like a little tor. So we went up there and sat in the shelter of the stones and waited for the mist to pass. The time was about six o’clock or just after.”

  Now his hand was resting on the back of her seat. She held her breath.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing really. We sat there and chatted We had half a loaf of bread and some chocolate and a bottle of water and we consumed all that. In due course night came on and some time after dark the mist seemed to melt away and the sky became clear again and we could see the stars. But there was no moon, so we felt it would be dangerous to start walking again. After a while we started to see strange lights up in the sky, sort of moving round in circles, wheeling around each other. We tried to make out what on earth they were. We guessed they might have been car head-lamps coming up a winding hill or something and shining up on the remains of the mist in the sky, but we never found a convincing explanation for them.”

  She could imagine the scene. It seemed quite frightening to her. After all she had never been that far from the comforts of civilisation.

  ” Anyway,” he continued, “after a while we felt tired and lay down, and some time later we must have drifted off to sleep.”

  “What did the others do when you didn’t return to the Youth Hostel?” Why was her voice trembling. Was it because he was so close to her now?

  “Oh, they didn’t worry that we weren’t back by dark. We’d already said we might be late. They knew we could look after ourselves. Little did they know.” His chuckle made a shiver run down her spine. “When we woke up at about five in the morning we were feeling very cold and damp. The funny thing was, we realised then that we had obviously chosen a sheltered spot, because we found we were surrounded by about a dozen animals - some sheep and a cow and even a couple of ponies.”

  “What did they do?”

  “The animals? Nothing. They eyed us a bit suspiciously but we didn’t seem to frighten them. Anyway the day was clear except for a bit of early mist which evaporated as soon as the sun came up. So we set off again. We discovered that actually we were less than a mile from the Pool. There’s a letter box there with a manual franking pad so that you can post letters or cards and wait for the next person who comes along to take them back to the nearest post office. Of course we’d forgotten to take any cards with us. So we never had any proof that we’d got there.”

  Although their bodies were nearly touching it was as though his mind was miles away from her. She felt alone. She had to bring him back.

  “So what happened, Richard?”

  His eyes concentrated on her again. “Then - nothing much. We set off for the Youth Hostel. We chose a longer route back but keeping further from the river, and that proved to be much quicker. In fact we arrived back about nine-thirty, just as the others were having breakfast and discussing whether to report us to the authorities as missing. So,” he said, “that’s the story of how I spent a night in the open in the middle of Dartmoor with a collection of sheep and other wildlife.”

  She laughed lightly, trying to escape from the shadow the story had cast over them. “An adventure with a happy ending.”

  “Not really,” he said and his eyes had gone bleak.

  “What then?”

  He shook himself. “I told you Edward was an odd bod. He was annoyed with himself for not taking a postcard to post to himself. He told me the following weekend that he was going back to Cranmere Pool to post a card. He wanted me to go with him.”

  Susannah had a sudden dread feeling of disaster. “What happened?”

  “I refused to go with him.” He laughed bitterly. “I said he was daft and that one night on the moor was enough for me. Besides, if I’m honest, I’d arranged to go out with a girl I’d been pursuing for some time and I didn’t want to miss out on that. So he went o
n his own.”

  He stopped and looked out of the window and the silence seeped into the car with the cold. After a while he said, “The silly bugger got lost and never came back. His body was found after a search two days later.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  “Of course I do. He was my best friend and I let him down.”

  “No you didn’t. It was his silly idea.”

  “But I should have been with him.” There were tears in his eyes. “It’s been like that all through my life. The people that I love most have all died.” He almost whispered, “And it has always been my fault.”

  She rested her hand on his. It was deathly cold. “Of course it hasn’t. You couldn’t help what happened to Edward. At least you didn’t die with him.” She desperately wanted to comfort him but she felt he was holding aloof from her, as though she was partly to blame for the tragedy.

  “Come on,” she said. “Forget those miserable thoughts. You didn’t bring me up here to distress me with tales of what happened in your youth, did you?” She shook his hand. “Well, did you?”

  He shook himself. “No. I’m sorry. I had no intention of telling you that old story. I don’t know why I did. It must have been the mist. I had expected it to be sunny and warm up here.”

  “So why did you bring me up here.”

  He was leaning over her. He seemed to have thrown off his miserable mood. He said, with a slightly ragged grin, “I brought you up here so that we could be alone together.”

  “Alone?” She looked up at him, and her stomach twisted with something almost like fear, as she realised that he desired her, wanted to take possession of her, wanted to get his hands on her body.

  “It’s beautiful down on the coast,” he said, “and sunny and friendly. But there are always so many people around. Up here - particularly when the weather closes in like this - we are alone together. Nobody is likely to come along and disturb us.” He smiled like a hunter confronting his victim. “Nobody is likely to interrupt us.”