Lost Voyage

by Pauline Rowson

  Marvik crossed to the beach. He watched as the waves crashed on to the stones. The sky had grown overcast and dark clouds were gathering out to sea and over the cliffs of Beachy Head to his right. Was the Celeste the key to what had happened in 2003 and recently? Bradshaw had known nothing about the murals, not until Gavin had come along. He and Meryl had believed their fraud would be exposed but perhaps Bradshaw suddenly realized what had really happened and recognized who was behind it. If so, that would have given him enormous scope for blackmail, which he’d tried with disastrous consequences. It had to be someone he had worked with. And someone who knew those murals were on the Celeste. Royden had said that Landguard had done a stint on cruise liners. It didn’t suit Tim … who did a stint on them but left to go into the salvage industry and then to work for Duncan. Convenient then for him to have been the master on the Mary Jo. And had Royden finally realized what had happened and been taken out because of that?

  Marvik’s mind flicked back to the chemicals acquired by Jemma Duisky which could have been used to wipe out the crew of the Mary Jo. A deadly chemical that acted swiftly and silently and could kill within an instant so as to prevent the master or any of the crew sending out a distress signal. But perhaps Timothy Landguard hadn’t wanted to send out a distress signal. Perhaps he’d worn a protective mask because the chemical had to be something that could kill when breathed in rather than on impact, causing an explosion which would have wrecked the boat and killed them all. And Landguard would have had to get off the Mary Jo and aboard another craft he’d arranged to rendezvous with.

  He watched two children playing on the beach and a dog leaping around their feet as they threw stones into the sea for it to retrieve. It was a chemical that Landguard had come across during his time at sea. Not one involved in a marine casualty because that would have been big news, as Strathen had said. Perhaps it was a consignment of chemicals which, not necessarily lethal on their own, when exposed to air could be deadly. It could be a chemical used in a manufactured commodity. Had an incident on board a container ship Landguard had worked on contained this chemical, which had given him the idea of how he might dispose of the crew of the Mary Jo?

  Marvik stared out at the horizon, where he could see in the far distance a large car carrier making for the Continent. Strathen hailed him and Marvik hurried back to the car.

  ‘Take a look at these – they’re the paintings Mrs Podanski said were found in the basement of the government building in Moscow.’

  Marvik found himself firstly studying a brightly coloured picture with an elongated figure working over a giant piece of machinery. There was a kind of fury about it, an obsession that at all costs the job must be done but, rather than liberating the worker, the machinery looked to be dominating him. He said as much.

  ‘You’ll make an art critic yet. But you’re right. And that’s one of the reasons why the authorities came to dislike her. Her work came to represent the slavery of the Soviet citizens. Take a look at the other two.’

  They were both in the same style. One was of a tall, thin woman with a sharp-featured face in front of a fast-moving train that gave Marvik the impression of someone being swept along in a direction she didn’t want to take. The other was of a giant ship and a man with a small hand tool and a tiny bench in front of it. He was dwarfed by the ship, possibly representing the common man being overshadowed and subdued by the state.

  Strathen said, ‘Mrs Podanski was right – they were sold at auction for just over four million pounds. The shipbuilding picture is in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, the factory one is in the New York Art Gallery and the train one is at the Tate in London. And there’s more which could confirm that the murals on the Celeste were Elona’s work.’

  Marvik listened keenly.

  ‘I haven’t been able to find any images of them but what I did find was that Yakov Borislov was the state official responsible for commissioning ship building in the early 1960s, including the Lyudmila.’

  ‘The Soviet defector, or rather he hoped to be.’

  Strathen nodded. ‘Yes. Officially and rather conveniently he died of a heart attack on board a cruise ship, not the Lyudmila, in 1967 before he could jump overboard and get picked up by the US coastguard. Someone shopped him and I don’t think it was Elona because I suspect she might have been his mistress in return for the commission and in the hope that she could follow him to the West, except he failed to tell her when he was going. So we have three possibilities. One, our killer worked on the Celeste as part of the crew as you said, and when he read about the find and the auction of those paintings in either one of the broadsheets or the art magazines where it was fully reported, he realized their potential worth.’

  ‘Possibly Landguard.’

  Strathen nodded. ‘Two, our killer was a passenger on the Celeste and after reading the newspaper articles remembered what he’d seen on board and set himself up as a ship broker in order to acquire them. Or three, he had a mission to carry out – to terminate Borislov, which he successfully completed. And if that’s the case then he would have full knowledge of Borislov’s affair with Elona Kadowski and that she was an artist engaged on painting those murals on the Celeste. He thought nothing of her or her work until he read how much her paintings had been sold for. And he knew that Borislov had commissioned her to paint the murals on the Celeste. If he’s our man then we’re looking for someone in his early to mid-seventies.’

  ‘It fits with the language Helen overheard those two men, Colbourne and Marwell, using on the pontoon about taking out the target, although from the lock-keeper and marina duty manager’s description neither of them were old enough to be our agent, or rather one certainly wasn’t. The other man could be. Nobody saw him. Would someone who was once an agent engage others to do his dirty work?’

  ‘He’s getting older and made a fortune out of flogging those paintings. Maybe he got tired of soiling his hands and hasn’t got the health or energy to take anyone out now but he’d know all about deadly chemicals. He could have been a double agent back then and possibly has been for years. And he could easily have traced Jemma Duisky. He would have had access to information on Edward Duisky, Elona Kadowski and Yakov Borislov. Edward Duisky and Elona Kadowski were granted asylum here and naturalization because of the fact they could have had information that could be helpful to the government. Their communications and movements would have been monitored for a while on the grounds they could have been spies. Or perhaps Elona Kadowski was working for the British long before she arrived here. She might have been detailed to get close to Borislov and while working in East Germany managed to get certain information, which she’d extracted from him, to one of our agents. She had to get out of Russia when Borislov’s defection failed because she was in real danger of being arrested as a spy. Edward Duisky could have been her contact in Poland and then it got too hot for them there. When she came here she brought with her valuable information, which means her identity could have been protected for some time afterwards.’

  Marvik rapidly digested this. ‘The killer, after reading that her paintings were now worth a fortune, traced the Celeste to Newfoundland where he found the ship waiting to be salvaged. He made certain the murals were on board. Then he had to check there were no living relatives but why bother with that if he was going to steal them?’

  ‘Maybe he was hoping he’d discover more of her paintings.’

  ‘And he found Jemma completely ignorant of her mother’s fame. He also discovered she was something of a genius when it came to computers. But he didn’t need her expertise in that field – not until Bradshaw messed up his plans to get the Celeste to India. Whoever the killer is – an agent, former crew member of the Celeste or passenger, how would Bradshaw have got hold of him recently, if he did, in order to blackmail him?’

  ‘Maybe Gavin had tracked him down and told Bradshaw.’

  Marvik considered this. ‘Gavin could have just given the name to GCHQ but he didn’t. Why?’
/>
  ‘Perhaps he didn’t know it then. But he finally made the connection and confronted the killer.’

  Eagerly, Marvik said, ‘Bradshaw could have been the key to giving Gavin the identity of the killer. According to Karen Landguard, Gavin insisted on a flat in that road. There were others vacant with other landlords but it had to be one of Bradshaw’s and he went to work for Bradshaw. Why?’ Marvik asked, his mind working furiously. Then answered his own question. ‘Not just because it was where Jemma had died but because he needed to pump Bradshaw for background information about his former career and his time with Helmsley’s.’

  ‘Gavin could have discovered from Jemma’s files her boss’s name – phoney, no doubt – but maybe she also described him. She could have backed up her files online and those are the files Gavin managed to locate and open.’

  ‘In 2003?’

  ‘Of course. Remote backup came into being in the late 1990s with the dot-com boom so it’s perfectly feasible she backed up all her research online but with whom and where would be the question. Whoever she used might have gone out of business by now but it’s far more likely they’ve been taken over or merged with another provider. If anyone could locate them then Gavin stood a good chance of doing so having known her from his college days and being something of a computer genius. He would still have needed the password to gain access to the encrypted files, but again that would have been child’s play for someone like him.’

  Strathen’s words brought Marvik up sharply. He’d never considered the fact that his parents might have backed up their projects and their research findings online. Their deaths had occurred in 1997; he’d thought it was too early for online backup of computer files, but not so, it seemed. It was possible that they had used both offline backup, such as the floppy disk he had found in Sarah’s possession, and online backup. He wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for the latter unless there was some reference to it in his parents’ papers in the safe-deposit box at the bank or on that disk. Could the password his father had used be Vasa – the name he’d written on that disk?

  ‘Are you OK, Art?’ Strathen asked, concerned.

  Marvik tried to bring his mind back to the job in hand but Strathen, who knew his background and the manner of his parents’ deaths, deserved to know what had momentarily distracted him from the mission. ‘I was just wondering if my parents had used an online back-up service in the 1990s.’

  ‘Would you like to find out?’ Strathen asked.

  ‘If you had asked me that a month ago I would have said no, but Sarah’s death, and Crowder’s belief it was as a result of something my parents were occupied on at the time of their deaths, has changed that.’ Marvik told him about the disk he’d found and how he had placed it in the bank without looking at it. He gave no more than the facts. He didn’t explain how he felt or relay details of his visit to Bell, the solicitor’s clerk, on Monday. There was no need for that.

  Strathen listened in silence. When Marvik had finished, he said, ‘When and if you’re ready to look into it, let me know. I can try opening the disk for you using the ancient hard drives I have, which will take that format, but that doesn’t mean to say I’d be able to read what is on the disk. After all this time, it could be corrupted.’

  Marvik knew that could be the case. And if Strathen couldn’t retrieve information from the disk then no one could. Crisply, he said, ‘To get back to Gavin, he knew it was someone that Bradshaw would recognize or know from the past.’

  ‘And once Bradshaw told Gavin who it was without perhaps realizing it, Gavin then set about locating him.’

  Marvik’s mind teemed with thoughts. ‘Gavin couldn’t have told Meryl who it was because according to Stephen Landguard his mother thought Gavin had discovered their fraud. Meryl Landguard phoned Bradshaw after Gavin had met her. No one saw him after Helen did. Maybe Bradshaw sussed out what Gavin was after once he’d met up with Meryl on his boat and went direct to the killer to confront him and blackmail him over it. Bradshaw told the killer what he knew and what Gavin had unearthed. The killer promised to cut Bradshaw in if he’d remain silent, while we know what his real intention was. Gavin was taken somewhere by boat, possibly even Bradshaw’s boat.’

  ‘Or the killer’s or his accomplice’s.’

  Marvik nodded. ‘Gavin was held somewhere alive, probably drugged, as the autopsy shows no evidence of him being bound and gagged. Bradshaw was killed after Gavin had seen Meryl. Gavin could have known who the killer was when he met Meryl and was seeking confirmation of a fact that would prove he was correct but didn’t say anything to her about it. He put what she said with what he’d got from Bradshaw and knew who it was and where he could find him.’

  ‘Timothy Landguard?’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why the discovery of the Mary Jo is so interesting, because instead of four bodies on that vessel there are only three: Warrendale, Chale and Goodhead.’

  ‘Gavin would have needed to have crystal clear images of the intact bodies including facial images to know that, and have photographs of them all in order to be able to identify them.’

  ‘But they had been frozen in ice so it’s possible, especially if they didn’t die from an explosive device, which is unlikely if the boat was found intact. And if it had been struck by a freak wave, then it would have sank or overturned. The chances of all four crew being swept overboard, while not impossible, is unlikely.’

  ‘But how would he know what the crew looked like? I can’t find anything on them.’ Then Strathen quickly added, ‘But he discovered what Timothy Landguard looked like.’

  ‘And he wasn’t on board.’

  ‘Or the Mary Jo was a ghost ship with no bugger on board.’

  ‘If so then why were we called in?’

  ‘To find out what happened to the crew.’

  ‘No.’ Marvik shook his head. ‘I don’t think the Squad, GCHQ or MI5 would have bothered if that was the case. If the crew sent their CVs to Jemma then it’s possible she had pictures of them on her backed-up files.’

  ‘And Meryl Landguard could have described her husband to Gavin.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. From my meeting with her, she’d have told Gavin to leap off a cliff.’

  ‘Which he was supposed to have done but didn’t. Bradshaw might have shown Gavin a photograph of Timothy Landguard or described him and the crew to Gavin.’

  ‘Maybe. And maybe Stapledon did too. Gavin Yardly visited Stapledon, only Stapledon pretended to me that it was Stephen Landguard who came to see him. He said he panicked when I asked him questions but there was a reason why Gavin needed to question Stapledon and a reason why Stapledon lied to me. He gave me Moorcott to put me off the scent, or rather to divert me to the fraud, which means he knows a great deal more about all this. Gavin could have spun him a line about his research and tricked Stapledon into talking about Timothy Landguard and the crew and, despite Stapledon telling me he hadn’t met the crew, maybe he had. He’s had time to think about Royden’s death. Let’s go talk to him.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  But Hugh Stapledon wasn’t at home. His car had also gone. Marvik peered through the windows and letter box. He didn’t expect to find Stapledon inside. He cursed silently. They could wait for him to show but they didn’t have the time for that, and besides, there was the possibility that he’d taken off if he was their killer – which Marvik had already mentally discounted and did so again – or perhaps the killer had got to him ahead of them. As he was considering his next move a neighbour, spotting him, obviously curious and suspicious, came out and asked if he could help.

  Marvik explained that he had been given Stapledon’s address by the charity he worked for and needed to speak to him urgently about a marine matter. The man’s expression cleared then looked sorrowful. ‘You mean the death of Hugh’s friend. Hugh told me about it on his way out about an hour ago. He was very distracted and upset. I could barely understand what he was talking about. He said something about having worked wi
th him on car carriers, transporting Japanese cars and how he couldn’t believe it had happened the way it must have done.’

  ‘How what had happened?’ Marvik asked, trying not to sound too sharp and frightening off the neighbour, but his heart skipped a beat as the thought that had been niggling at the back of his mind suddenly crystallized.

  ‘I’m not sure. The accident, I guess. He took off in his car saying he needed to think.’

  ‘Any idea where he was heading?’ Marvik asked without much hope.

  ‘He said his friend had been killed by the Birling Gap, so I suppose he could have gone there. People often wish to visit the scene of the tragedy, don’t they? To pay their respects.’

  Marvik thanked him and climbed into the car.

  ‘According to the neighbour, Stapledon could have gone to the Birling Gap. It’s only two miles from here. If he has then his car will be there.’

  ‘He could be anywhere on the Downs.’

  Marvik knew that and, if so, it could take an age to find him.

  As Strathen headed for the Birling Gap, Marvik rapidly relayed what had occurred to him. ‘I think Stapledon’s finally realized who the killer might be and he’s worked out what happened on the Mary Jo. So have I.’

  Strathen threw him a look.

  ‘Sodium azide.’ Marvik let Strathen digest this. He knew it wouldn’t take him long.

  It didn’t.

  ‘Used as a chemical preservative in hospitals and laboratories, in agriculture for pest control and in detonators and other explosives,’ Strathen said.

  ‘Yes. And we both know how highly explosive it is if it comes into contact with heavy metals such as silver, gold, lead, copper or brass, or if there is friction as a result of heat or a shock. In such cases sodium azide changes into a toxic gas called hydrazoic acid. Breathing that in a confined space would have killed them rapidly and silently. The Mary Jo didn’t explode though because, according to Gavin Yardly, he found it in the ice. There is the possibility there might have been a minor explosion on board in a small, confined space where the crew were assembled but there is another way that sodium azide can kill and that is if it comes into contact with water.’