Dangerous Cargo Read online

  ‘Bryony, where did you get this picture?’

  ‘Ben gave it to me. Yeah, I was surprised he had it,’ she added, interpreting Marvik’s look. ‘When I told Ben that Sarah and I were looking into granddad’s past he said he’d found the picture years ago stuffed at the back of a drawer in grandma’s house. He liked it because it showed what a rebel Jack was. Ben’s a bit of an anarchist.’

  Marvik doubted that. Ben didn’t care about anything except where and when his next fix would come from. One of Darrow’s colleagues must have taken it and given him a copy.

  ‘Who’s the man with your grandfather, at the other end of the banner?’

  ‘No idea,’ she answered distractedly, her worried gaze focused on her brother and then on the grey sky. ‘Where’s that helicopter?’ she cried with frightened, anxious eyes, cradling Ben in her arms. He was groaning and Marvik could see he was on the verge of unconsciousness. He caught the distant throb of a helicopter. Angrily, she said, ‘He wouldn’t be sick if you’d left us alone. I don’t want anything to do with those men and what happened back then. I wish I’d never answered Sarah’s email. I wish I’d never asked her to share with me. I don’t bloody well care what happened to Jack Darrow – all I care about is Ben.’

  ‘He’ll be OK,’ Marvik reassured her, sincerely hoping that was the case. As the sound of the helicopter grew louder he unclipped more of the awning, leaving a small part of it covering Strathen at the helm, who had put the throttle into neutral. It had started to rain and that and the spray from the sea soaked them. Marvik had one more question to ask her. Holding his phone towards her he shouted above the wind, rain and the noise of the helicopter, ‘Do you know who the other men with your grandfather are?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sarah must have pointed out her father to you.’

  ‘Yes, of course she did.’

  Crowder’s words flashed before Marvik when he’d put the photograph that Freynsham had given him on the table: You only have Freynsham’s word it’s Oscar.

  ‘Which one of them is Oscar Redburn?’

  ‘What?’ she cried tetchily, her eyes swivelling between the sky and her brother.

  ‘Please, Bryony. It’s important,’ he shouted above the throb of the helicopter now hovering overhead. Strathen was on the radio to the helicopter pilot. ‘Which one is Oscar Redburn?’ Marvik insisted.

  She glared at him, then back at the picture. ‘Him, of course. That’s Sarah’s father.’ She stabbed a finger at the picture.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I am. That’s what Sarah told me.’

  And that meant Freynsham had lied.

  ELEVEN

  Strathen dropped Marvik off on the pontoon at Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth, where he quickly made his way through the waterside shopping complex and along to the nearby railway station. Strathen would continue his journey to the Hamble and his apartment where he’d resume his research into Jack Darrow and the union’s past in the hope of identifying the man beside Darrow. Ben and Bryony had been airlifted from the boat and transported to St Richard’s Hospital at Chichester. She’d wrenched off the jacket Strathen had given her, declaring she wanted nothing more to do with either of them. Marvik had asked her where she would stay now that she had nowhere to live. ‘I’ve got friends. I’ll call one of them,’ she’d said coldly. Clearly she had no intention of telling him where that was. He urged her not to call them from her mobile phone but she’d eyed him with contempt. She blamed him for everything that had happened to her and her brother.

  Consulting the departures board at the station, Marvik saw that he had twenty minutes before the train to Southampton. From there he’d catch the interconnecting train to Wareham and then a taxi to Kimmeridge Bay, where Freynsham’s wife had told him on the phone he’d find her husband. He was filming there for most of the day. Marvik rang Crowder on the pay-as-you-go phone at the harbour railway station. Swiftly he brought him up to speed with events and the fact he was going to pay another visit to Freynsham and why.

  ‘Bryony Darrow and her brother will need protection.’

  ‘You know I can’t authorize or arrange that,’ Crowder replied.

  Marvik did, but he’d asked anyway. It would have meant revealing that Crowder’s department, the National Intelligence Marine Squad, were involved and that meant jeopardizing the mission.

  Crowder added, ‘Perhaps the local police will provide it once they connect her with Sarah Redburn and the fire at Eel Pie Island.’

  And they would make the connection. The coastguard now had her details and they’d relay that to the police. Bryony would tell the coastguard officers and the hospital staff how she and her brother had come to be on board the boat and that meant the police would come knocking on Strathen’s door. They’d ask for Marvik’s whereabouts because his name was cropping up too frequently for the police to ignore – he’d had breakfast with Sarah, he’d called her mobile several times, he’d stolen a boat and he’d escaped a fire that could have killed the woman Sarah had befriended and where she had left her personal belongings. He wondered if the police might actually suspect him of setting the fire and then kidnapping Bryony and her brother. The latter didn’t stack up, though, because he’d hardly have alerted the coastguard if that was the case.

  Hitching up his rucksack containing some provisions and the notebook he’d taken from Bryony’s house, which he still hadn’t looked at, Marvik made for the coffee shop at the Wightlink ferry terminal where he bought a large coffee and returned to the platform to wait for his train. It was on time, and boarding it he wondered if the police would search Ben’s bedsit when Bryony told them the story, and if they’d find the listening device and surveillance equipment or if that would have conveniently vanished by the time they got there.

  He swallowed his coffee, gazing out of the window as the densely urbanised streets of Portsmouth sped past him. As the train crossed the creek that made Portsmouth an island and swung west, Marvik’s thoughts turned to the notebook in his jacket pocket. He had time to peruse it now but he didn’t. He recalled that Sarah had said there was something else she had wanted to discuss with him – had it been the notebook?

  He closed his eyes, just as he’d closed his mind to his parents and their fate for years. He’d been too busy to consider the past and often in too much danger to analyse why he’d shut them out. Langton, the psychiatrist, who had treated him after his head injury, said it was because they’d shut him out when he’d reached the age of eleven and he was trying psychologically to pay them back for that, and to deny the pain they’d inflicted on him because of it. Marvik thought that a load of old bollocks.

  He was exhausted and needed sleep; he’d make do with forty minutes to Southampton and another hour from there to Wareham. Time enough after that to consider how he was going to play things with Freynsham. The train was scheduled to arrive at Wareham just after twelve thirty. He switched off all thoughts of the past and the mission and fell asleep almost instantly, conditioning his mind to wake within thirty minutes. It was a trick of mental discipline he’d developed during his years in the Marines. He woke as the train slid into Southampton station.

  He climbed on to the train to Wareham and repeated the process, waking just before the train stopped an hour and ten minutes later at the country town situated close to the Jurassic Coast. He gave the taxi driver instructions for the small hamlet of Kimmeridge. It was about ten miles away. Marvik asked if there were any pubs or cafés close to the bay.

  ‘There’s Clavell’s Café in the village of Kimmeridge,’ the driver answered. ‘It’s run by a farming family and highly recommended.’

  But Marvik wasn’t interested in food. He thought that he might just find Freynsham and his television crew at lunch there. He couldn’t envisage them sitting in the bay eating sandwiches, especially as it was cold and windy, but the heavy rain they’d had on the boat earlier that morning had already passed through the West Country, leaving an overcast sky an
d a dampness in the air that promised more to come. It wasn’t ideal weather for filming. Marvik hoped they hadn’t abandoned it and that Freynsham hadn’t returned to Lyme Regis because it would take him a while to reach there. But as the taxi rounded the bend in the country lane, Marvik spotted Freynsham’s car in the café car park and asked the taxi driver to pull in.

  There were five other vehicles parked. No one was sitting outside in the café courtyard and there was no one in the quiet and peaceful country lane. In the summer season it would be different. The area attracted a lot of visitors who flocked down to the rugged, spectacular bay, and as he made for the café entrance he saw opposite a sign adjoining some waste ground claiming that a Jurassic marine centre museum and exhibition gallery was to be built there. It made him think of Oscar Redburn and his last fossil-hunting trip, according to Freynsham, but Marvik didn’t believe Oscar had ever come here or anywhere else along the coast, fossil hunting.

  He pushed open the door and saw Freynsham sitting at a table in the corner along with two men and a woman. Freynsham looked up, started visibly and then frowned as Marvik crossed to him.

  ‘A word,’ Marvik said abruptly. Freynsham’s colleagues’ eyes swivelled to him, reflecting surprise. Marvik wasn’t in the mood for being polite.

  ‘I don’t think I have anything to say to you,’ Freynsham said haughtily.

  ‘In that case I’ll sit down and say it.’ Marvik made to draw a chair from a neighbouring table. ‘Perhaps your colleagues will want to know all about your involvement with Os—’

  Freynsham sprang up. ‘We’ll talk outside.’

  ‘Pity. It’s beginning to rain.’

  Freynsham marched off, then paused and turned with a worried countenance when he saw that Marvik wasn’t following him. Marvik saw the curious gaze of the film crew and thought he detected amusement in their eyes. He turned and followed Freynsham with the feeling that Freynsham wasn’t well liked, only tolerated, and then barely.

  Outside, Freynsham rounded on Marvik. ‘What right have you to come here harassing me?’

  ‘Think that was harassment? I haven’t even started yet,’ Marvik sneered. He grabbed Freynsham’s arm tightly and forcibly marched him away from the café in the direction of a low building to its right. Freynsham tossed an anxious glance behind him.

  ‘Worried they’re filming this?’ Marvik snarled. ‘Perhaps it’ll appear on an outtake. Oh, I’m not bothered about being identified. I haven’t got a reputation to protect but you’re a public figure. And when I let it slip that you killed a man—’

  ‘That’s a lie and you know it,’ Freynsham protested, trying to free himself from Marvik’s grip but it was too strong. Marvik dragged Freynsham to the rear of the building out of sight of the road and prying eyes, not that there was anyone about and barely a car had passed them in either direction. If he needed to get rough there would be no witnesses but Marvik didn’t think he’d have to go that far. The threat of violence would be enough to make Freynsham talk.

  ‘Oscar Redburn vanished and now his daughter’s dead. She came to you shortly before she was murdered. And the next words out of your lying little mouth had better be the truth or I’ll beat them from you.’ Marvik thrust Freynsham from him so violently that he staggered, lost his foothold and fell heavily back on to the muddy, leaf-strewn earth. Marvik loomed menacingly over the terrified man.

  ‘I met her in February as I told you and that’s all. It’s the truth,’ Freynsham gabbled.

  ‘And you told her what?’

  ‘That I had no idea what happened to Oscar.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing.’

  Marvik grabbed the neck of Freynsham’s sweatshirt and pulled him off the ground. ‘Wrong answer.’ He balled his fist as though to smash it in Freynsham’s face.

  Freynsham cowered back and held up his hands. ‘I told her that her father was a manipulative bastard who cared sod all for the working man’s revolution, or anything else. He was only interested in himself,’ he cried, the sweat pouring off his brow.

  ‘Now why would you tell her that?’ Marvik didn’t release his hold or lessen it.

  ‘Because it’s the truth.’

  ‘Since when have you ever told the truth?’ Marvik sneered.

  ‘I did then and I am now.’

  Marvik looked hard into his frightened face.

  Freynsham hastily continued, ‘I didn’t want her to carry on looking for him, asking questions. I thought she might find out about the fossil.’

  ‘What fossil?’ Marvik said sharply.

  Freynsham swallowed. ‘The one I … he found.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We used to go fossil hunting along the coast.’

  ‘Not Oscar’s scene, I would have thought,’ Marvik said caustically.

  ‘No, well, he only came with me twice and he struck lucky. All the years I’d been doing it and only minor finds, then he comes along and on the second trip discovers something amazing and very rare,’ Freynsham said with bitter indignation. ‘It was in a piece of rock from the Triassic period that dates back two hundred to two hundred and fifty million years.’

  ‘And worth a lot of money?’

  Freynsham nodded.

  ‘And you killed him and stole it from him? Which was why you drove him to Lyme Regis the day he disappeared.’ Was he right? Did that mean this had nothing to do with Darrow’s death or with Pulford – were he and Strathen just chasing shadows? If so, then why the fire at Bryony’s house?

  ‘I didn’t kill him. He thought it was worthless.’

  ‘Because you told him that.’

  Freynsham swallowed and nodded.

  ‘Did he believe you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Marvik was beginning to read between the lines. He still had hold of Freynsham. A drizzling rain that brought with it the feel and smell of the sea was driving into them. ‘And when Oscar disappeared you helped yourself to it.’

  ‘I went round to Linda’s and there it was just lying in the kitchen among a load of junk. She had no idea that it was part of a rare fish that used to grind food with its mouth. I put it in my pocket. And the first thing that came into my head when she asked me where Oscar had gone was fossil hunting, and once I’d said it to her I had to say it to the police. It’s why I didn’t sell it for years. I thought it might look suspicious. It wasn’t until I came back to the UK after working as a geologist abroad that I said I’d found it and I sold it to help establish the business.’

  ‘And your reputation. And you never thought of giving any of the proceeds to Linda and Sarah,’ Marvik said scathingly.

  Freynsham coloured. ‘That would have meant admitting Oscar had something to do with finding it.’

  Marvik released his hold and pushed Freynsham away with disgust. He fell back but quickly scrambled up with a relieved expression that instantly changed to alarm as Marvik reached into his jacket pocket. Clearly expecting a weapon, he let out a sob of relief when he saw Marvik withdraw his phone. Marvik found the photograph that he’d copied across from Bryony’s phone and held it in front of Freynsham.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ Freynsham said, taken aback.

  ‘Which one is Oscar Redburn?’

  ‘You know. I gave you the other photograph. That’s him in the middle squatting on the ground,’ Freynsham said, puzzled.

  That wasn’t what Bryony had said. ‘Who’s this?’ Marvik indicated the man on the end on the right, the one Bryony had told him was Oscar.

  ‘Donald Brampton. He was studying politics and economics but he wasn’t really interested in the downtrodden working man, and he’s proved that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You’ve never heard of him?’

  ‘Should I have done?’ Marvik asked, trying to recall the name.

  ‘Maybe not, unless you’re into politics or economics. He’s chief executive and owner of Front Line Economics. It’s an international economic think tank that advises the g
overnment, business and the public sector. He’s always popping up on TV and radio and he’s frequently in the newspapers commenting on government policy, business matters, social and economic affairs. Getting involved in left-wing politics doesn’t seem to have hampered his career,’ Freynsham added acidly. ‘But then he changed sides during the Thatcher years. After he got his Master’s degree from the London School of Economics, where he went when he left Southampton Poly, he worked for the Adam Smith Institute, one of Margaret Thatcher’s favourite think tanks. He obviously said and did all the right things because he’s done very well for himself. He probably used that strike as a case study. I lost contact with him about fifteen years ago.’

  Marvik wasn’t sure that was the truth but he let it go. ‘And the two men behind you?’ Marvik knew who one was.

  ‘The older man is Jack Darrow and beside him is Joseph Cotleigh. He worked with Darrow at the docks. Darrow was shop steward and Cotleigh was on the local trade union committee. If I remember correctly they were part of the National Amalgamated Stevedores’ and Dockers’ Union.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘And Darrow?’ Marvik asked, watching Freynsham closely.

  ‘He died in an accident in the docks. Must have been just after that photograph was taken. I remember Oscar thinking that picture would make the newspapers or at least the local one, because a photographer from the local newspaper had turned up and taken some, but nothing appeared and Oscar was very pissed off about it. It was two days after that was taken that we drove out to Lyme Regis. Oscar had got bored with the whole protest thing. And I thought … well, you know what I thought.’

  ‘When did you hear that Darrow was dead?’

  ‘I can’t remember. I was more concerned about Oscar being missing.’

  ‘How did he and Darrow get on?’

  Freynsham squirmed. ‘Darrow was pretty scathing of us. He didn’t rate students highly. And Oscar could wind people up. He’d come over as cocky and sometimes he’d take the piss out of things which to Darrow and Cotleigh were deadly serious. It was their livelihood they were fighting for but Oscar saw it as an opportunity to get himself in the limelight.’