Turnstone (28 page)

‘We’ve got twenty-four hours from last night,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘plus another twelve if Bevan gives the say-so.’

Faraday nodded. They could hold all three men for a day and a half without having to go to a magistrate and face a legal argument.

‘What’s the point, though? Pollock’s right. Oomes and Bissett won’t crack.’

‘They won’t get bail, though. And that means Winchester nick.’

‘So?’

‘Marty Harrison’s mates are in there. The ones the drugs squad busted the morning they shot the boss. They’re banged up on the remand wing. One big happy family.’

Faraday was up on one elbow now. Winter was right. Charlie Oomes would spend at least a night on the remand wing at Winchester prison.

‘So?’ he said again.

Winter moved towards the window. He’d seen movement out on the harbour. He wanted to know what it was. Faraday peered over the back of the sofa.

‘Cormorant,’ he said briefly. ‘Tell me about Winchester.’

Winter shrugged, then emptied his glass.

‘I got word through to Marty about the state of Elaine Pope’s face,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think he was best pleased.’

Faraday studied him for a long moment, then smiled.

‘Result,’ he murmured.

Epilogue

For the next week or so, Faraday pulled together the file on Maloney. He’d thought about getting a statement himself from Ruth Potterne, but in the end he asked Cathy Lamb to do it. Ruth confirmed receipt of Maloney’s e-mail, described Henry’s state of mind as ‘troubled’, and admitted a relationship with Ian Hartson. Reading her statement, Faraday was uncomfortably aware of looking for clues about her current feelings. Was she still seeing Hartson? And if so, was it as all-consuming as it had been before?

With the file readied for despatch to the Crown Prosecution Service, Faraday resumed his vacation, buying himself a ferry ticket to France and running J-J to earth in a borrowed flat on a housing estate outside Caen. To his immense relief, the boy seemed genuinely happy and by the end of the evening he was beginning to suspect that he’d got Valerie wrong. She wasn’t, after all, a threat to J-J.
Au contraire
, she seemed – in ways that Faraday didn’t fully understand – to be in love with him.

Before he left Caen, Faraday invited them both to stay and bought a pair of open ferry tickets to seal the invitation. When J-J took him aside, wanting to know whether there were any strings attached, Faraday shook his head. J-J was twenty-two. For both of them, life had moved on. J-J looked delighted and then kissed him on both cheeks.

‘Very Gallic,’ Faraday signed in return, beaming.

In early September, a French fishing boat trawling for hake thirty miles north of Roscoff recovered a body from the sea. The face and flesh were largely eaten away, but a British passport in one of the pockets of the weatherproof jacket yielded a name and next of kin. Sam O’Connor, Ruth Potterne’s son.

The body was taken to Roscoff and stored overnight in a big freezer full of gutted fish. Inquiries were made next day by the local
Chef de Police
and a telex was despatched to the CID Superintendent at Portsmouth. That evening, Ruth Potterne answered a knock on her door. It was Faraday. He’d spent the best part of a month trying to work out what he’d say when this moment arrived, but the French police had spared him the trouble.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,’ he began.

The following morning, he drove her to the airport at Southampton. A chartered Cessna flew them to Roscoff, where an unmarked police car was waiting on the tarmac. The body had been transferred to a mortuary in the city’s hospital.

When the green-suited attendants slid the gurney out of the big fridge, Ruth needed only a second to confirm that the body was indeed her son. A sturdy silver chain still hung around what was left of his neck. He’d bought it in Brighton only weeks before his summons to replace Maloney on the Fastnet Race.

Outside the mortuary, Faraday conferred briefly with the pathologist who’d already examined Sam’s remains. His English was far from perfect but he left Faraday in no doubt that the body held few clues to the circumstances that had led to the boy’s death. He’d doubtless come to grief in some kind of accident. Water in his lungs indicated death by drowning.
Aucun mystère
.

Before they returned to the airport, Faraday took Ruth to a nearby hotel for a drink. They sat at the bar and he did his best to comfort her while choosing the best moment to ask about Ian Hartson. Hartson, like Bissett, was currently on bail, charged with conspiracy to murder. In the absence of further evidence, CPS lawyers were close to dropping the case.

‘Have you seen him at all? Hartson?’

‘Yes. We met in London last week.’ She smiled. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason really. I felt a bit of a fool, that’s all.’

‘Why?’

‘For not asking the obvious question. Henry was right. You
were
having an affair. I made his mistake. I never looked further than Maloney.’

‘Was that your fault?’

‘Of course it was. I’m a detective. That’s why they pay me.’ For the first time that day, she laughed.

‘Men are funny,’ she said. ‘They’re always getting things in a muddle. Ian’s the same. He’s no more idea of who I am than Henry had. He’s got an image in his head and he’s too lazy or too insecure to get beyond that. Men should take a closer look sometimes, and maybe listen a bit harder.’

Faraday rocked back on his stool. The last thing he’d been expecting was a speech like this and it was hard not to take it personally. He reached for his glass, suddenly keen to change the subject.

‘I’m sorry about Sam,’ he said. ‘Just when you might have been coming to terms with it.’

She shook her head very slowly, a gesture tinged with pity, then leaned forward on the stool and touched him lightly on the hand.

‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I wanted a body. I wanted a funeral. I wanted to say a proper goodbye. I think psychiatrists have a word for it … closure?’ She smiled at him. ‘Isn’t that what they call it?’

Faraday swallowed a mouthful of Kronenburg, saying nothing. He thought he’d got this woman out of his system. He thought the last couple of weeks would have been quite enough to have loosened the grip she’d taken on his life. He was wrong.

‘What about Charlie,’ she was saying, ‘Charlie Oomes?’

There was a big gilt-framed mirror on the wall behind the bar. For a second or two, he studied their reflection. Should he tell her the truth about her son? That Oomes had thrown him overboard? That otherwise he might have survived?

Of course he shouldn’t. He studied the remains of his lager. According to Winter, Oomes’s blood had been all over the showers on the remand wing, and the latest reports from the hospital had confirmed the need for plastic surgery. A life sentence, after all.

Faraday raised the glass in a toast.

‘Closure.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll drink to that.’