Silent Running Page 5

  ‘Are they going to give his photograph to the media?’

  ‘Not yet, because of what he was working on. They’ve called in their own hi-tech experts but I’ll be astounded if they get anything from Palmer’s PC or anyone else’s at Chiron, but the police can access international databases that I can’t get into, so they might turn up something. I’m searching the Internet for any references to the applications he was working on and I’m trawling the social media networks for any sign that Palmer was active on them, but so far I’ve drawn a blank. Don’t worry about the police, Art. I shouldn’t think they’ll be back.’

  Marvik rang off. He tried Charlotte’s number several times with no answer. She was obviously avoiding him. He didn’t blame her; after all he’d made it clear he didn’t want to renew their relationship and maybe she felt the only way to prevent herself from being hurt was not to answer. But he had to speak to her. And he would in the morning.

  The smell of her in his bed made it impossible for him to sleep. At one a.m. he stripped off the sheets and went downstairs where he tossed them into the washing machine and made a coffee. The cottage felt cold despite the heat from the Aga. He checked his phone and his emails. There were no messages. He toyed with searching the Internet again for more items on Blackerman but didn’t. He returned to bed but found no refuge in sleep. His mind was too active, and his senses attuned to a possible intrusion.

  At six thirty he rose and drove to Brading Down where he went for a punishing run, pushing himself, testing his fitness levels, pleased to find that while not at his peak, he wasn’t too far off it. It was an hour after sunrise by the time he returned to the cottage and thirty minutes later he was calling the critical care unit asking to speak to Charlotte Churley.

  ‘She’s not here.’

  Marvik’s eyes flicked to the clock on the kitchen wall. It was eight thirty.

  ‘Can you tell me when she’s next on duty? I’m a friend. She came to see me yesterday. Art Marvik. I can’t get through on her mobile number.’

  There was a portentous pause and Marvik felt a cold chill run through him. ‘What is it? What’s happened? Is Charlotte OK?’ he asked anxiously while his mind rapidly ran the gauntlet of possibilities. She’d been taken ill on the train; she’d been knocked down by a vehicle on her way to the station; she was wandering about suffering memory loss.

  After a moment the woman answered with concern in her voice, ‘She was meant to be on duty last night but she didn’t show up. No one’s seen or heard from her. She’s been reported missing.’

  Marvik’s heart lurched. His head was whirling. Did she get on that train to Birmingham? He should have made sure she did. He should have made certain she was safe. It was his fault if anything had happened to her.

  He quickly rang off and headed for his boat wondering if the police would come to interview him. Two missing persons laid at his door was enough to make them highly suspicious but he didn’t give a damn about that. He had to find Charlotte. And Southampton, where he had left her, had to be the starting point.

  FOUR

  Thirty minutes later Marvik was mooring up on a visitors’ berth at Ocean Village Marina, and running the short distance to the Town Quay where he began a methodical and thorough process of interviewing every taxi driver who had been on duty the previous morning, wishing he had a photograph of Charlotte to show them. None of them had taken her to the station or anywhere else.

  He repeated the process inside the shopping centre with the same result. No one remembered seeing her. Feeling increasingly worried and desperate he headed for the railway station where his enquiries drew looks of astonishment and disbelief. He was told countless times that it was a busy station, that she could have slipped through unnoticed. Only those who caused a fuss or were particularly friendly and pleasant, which he gathered was about as rare as an honest politician, were noticed.

  Both the Town Quay and the railway station had CCTV but as a civilian he had no chance of being shown it. He needed the police to authorize that and he’d make damn sure they would. Maybe they were already on to it. Would DI Feeny and DS Howe be on the investigation? Her disappearance would also involve the Royal Navy Police. They investigated crime both on ship and shore establishments. Charlotte’s disappearance had been at neither, however, and it probably wasn’t considered a criminal matter. She was absent without leave, yes, but they’d probably put that down to a health problem.

  He called her unit but this time he was met with a guarded response that Charlotte Churley was unavailable. He rang off. Perhaps the police would treat it as low priority but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. His gut told him time was critical. Charlotte was in danger and he had to do something to help locate her.

  Deeply disturbed, he returned to his boat, considering what to do next. The obvious answer was to go to the police and tell them that Charlotte had visited Terence Blackerman in prison and that afterwards she’d spent the night with him. It would expose the fact that he’d lied to the police and that would draw deeper suspicion from Feeny over his possible involvement with Ashley Palmer’s disappearance, but to hell with that.

  ‘Art Marvik?’

  He spun round to find he was being addressed by a dark-haired man in his early fifties with deep brown eyes in a round weather-worn face. He was wearing a sailing jacket of a well-known and expensive brand over casual trousers and deck shoes. He was also carrying a small sailing holdall. Marvik had never seen him before. And neither had he heard him come up behind him. My God, had he become that sloppy? At one time he’d have heard a fly land on the pontoon behind him. Where the devil had he sprung from? How did he know him?

  ‘Yes?’ Marvik answered warily and tetchily.

  ‘We have a mutual acquaintance’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry.’ He didn’t have time for casual chit chat.

  ‘Yes, I know, to find Charlotte Churley.’

  Marvik started in surprise. Christ, was he looking at the bastard who had taken her? Was this man here to demand some kind of ransom?

  ‘Can I come on board? It will be easier to explain.’

  Yeah, and easier to be attacked, thought Marvik, but two could play that game, and he was younger, fitter and trained to kill. He nodded him on to the boat. He’d have to turn his back on him to open up but he didn’t think he’d be in danger of an attack then. This man wanted something first. But Marvik waved him into the cabin ahead of him.

  He reached into his pocket. Marvik made to spring forward.

  ‘My ID,’ the man said quickly and handed a wallet across to Marvik.

  He found he was addressing Detective Superintendent Philip Crowder. ‘Are you from the Birmingham police?’

  ‘No. Shall we sit.’ It wasn’t a question.

  Crowder slid on to the bench seat and put his sailing holdall on the table. After a moment Marvik took up position opposite. He was beginning to wonder if this was the man who had entered his house and browsed his laptop. If so then he was bloody good, but not good enough that it had escaped his trained eye. Yet Marvik knew he’d made mistakes. He needed to sharpen up.

  Crowder withdrew a laptop computer and a Manila folder.

  ‘Terence Blackerman,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Marvik exclaimed.

  ‘At least you didn’t say who and pretend you hadn’t heard of him.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because Charlotte visited him yesterday in prison before coming to see you.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Crowder fired up the computer. ‘We know you’ve been asking at the taxi rank and at the railway station if anyone saw Charlotte Churley after you dropped her off there yesterday at nine fifty-seven.’

  ‘You had someone following me?’ Marvik hadn’t spotted anyone. Had he really lost it so completely? It seemed so. The thought depressed him.

  ‘We don’t need to. It’s obvious you’d do so after discovering she hadn’t returned to duty.’

  Marvik was
puzzled. He didn’t understand any of this.

  ‘Have you been called in to investigate her disappearance?’

  ‘No.’

  He rapidly thought. ‘Then you’ve got a tap on my phone.’

  ‘Not on yours but we have been able to keep tabs on Charlotte and her calls until yesterday morning when, at ten fifteen, we lost track of her, or rather we found her phone in a dustbin on the Town Quay.’

  Marvik went cold inside. ‘Then you know I’ve been calling that number.’

  ‘Yes. But Charlotte didn’t have your number logged in her address book. We found the text you’d sent to her from another mobile number and her reply to you.’

  ‘Who’s “we”?’ Marvik didn’t bother to say he hadn’t sent that text. Not yet. He needed to know what this was all about.

  ‘The police, of course,’ Crowder answered solemnly.

  But which branch? wondered Marvik, though he could tell by Crowder’s set expression that he wasn’t going to expand on that if he asked, so he didn’t bother. ‘If you knew Charlotte’s movements why didn’t you prevent her from going missing?’

  ‘Because we didn’t have anyone following her; we were only tracking her via her mobile phone.’

  ‘But you knew she was being followed.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t follow her on Wednesday?’

  ‘We had no need to; we knew where she was going, to the prison and then to you.’

  Marvik wasn’t sure he believed him about not following Charlotte.

  ‘We have CCTV images of her after you dropped her off at Town Quay.’

  Crowder swivelled the computer around. Marvik thought that Crowder had to be a genuine police officer otherwise he’d never have been given permission to have this stuff. With keen interest he studied the screen as Crowder continued.

  ‘You can see Charlotte on the quayside walking towards the taxi rank. Her bright red jacket is distinctive. Then the catering supplies delivery van shows up and she disappears behind it. That’s the last sighting we have of her.’

  Marvik speedily recalled the layout of the Town Quay. ‘There’s a door into the centre just behind that van. She might have gone inside and walked to the street exit from there.’

  ‘She didn’t. Here are the pictures over the street exit for the period following her disappearance into the centre.’

  Marvik peered at the people coming in and out: none of them was Charlotte, even if she’d changed her jacket.

  Crowder said, ‘We’ve also studied the CCTV images inside the centre. There is no sign of her in any of the shops or entering by any of the doors on the outside to the first-floor offices and neither does she show up in the corridors. She didn’t double back and leave by the south exit and neither did she board a private boat or catch the ferry to West Cowes or Hythe.’

  ‘Could she have been bundled into that catering van?’

  ‘We’re checking out the driver and the company. The catering van was there for fourteen minutes. The driver unloaded some drinks and supplies on to a trolley and wheeled it into the centre. No other car drove up behind the van and neither is there a motorbike or motor scooter arriving or leaving shortly after Charlotte’s disappearance. It’s possible that Charlotte changed her clothes in the ladies’ toilet inside the centre, stuffed her jacket and trousers into a bag and left. She could have been told how to dodge the cameras.’

  ‘But why should she?’ Marvik said, puzzled.

  ‘Maybe she planned to disappear. Perhaps she’d got fed up with being a nurse or being in the navy.’

  But Marvik could see that Crowder didn’t believe that any more than he could. It was what some might say though. ‘She could simply have applied to come out of the navy.’

  ‘Perhaps she couldn’t wait that long. Perhaps she’s met a man and has run off with him, or is suffering from post-traumatic stress and just wants to be alone.’ The latter was a view that Marvik had considered himself, so it would be easy for others to believe it.

  He said, ‘But why go to the bother of changing her clothes?’

  ‘To delay the navy’s investigation into her disappearance and give her time to get away.’

  ‘She might have been forced to change her clothes.’

  ‘There is that possibility. But there’s another: she’s been forcibly abducted because of her visit to Terence Blackerman.’

  And that had been, and still was, Marvik’s belief. ‘But why, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘That’s what we need to find out and why we need your help.’

  ‘I’d never even heard of him until yesterday.’

  ‘But someone intended you to because someone sent Charlotte Churley that text message purporting to be from you. It was sent from a pay-as-you-go phone which no longer exists. Of course it could belong to you. You could have bought it for the purpose of luring Charlotte to your cottage and then killing her.’

  ‘What!’ Marvik cried.

  ‘You took her out on your boat either late last night or early this morning and you killed her and ditched her body in the sea.’

  ‘But she’s there on your CCTV images!’

  ‘Where? That’s just a blonde woman in a red jacket like Charlotte’s.’

  ‘You can’t honestly believe that!’

  ‘You and Charlotte were in a relationship four years ago. You’ve grown bitter since it ended, and jealous. You were determined to make her see that you were the only man for her. When she declined you got angry. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her; things just got out of hand.’

  Marvik made to retort then snapped his mouth shut as he studied Crowder’s implacable expression. Did he really believe that? No. But others might. In the silence that followed Marvik was conscious of the sound of the wind slapping the halyards against the masts outside and the gentle rocking of the boat. His mind flew back to what Charlotte and the prison officer, Ron Hubbard, had told him and what he’d read about Terence Blackerman in the early hours of yesterday morning.

  After a moment he said, ‘You think Blackerman was framed.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  Marvik’s mind raced. ‘And if he was framed then it’s possible he told Charlotte something that the real killer of Esther Shannon doesn’t want to be made public. But why wait this long to tell? And why reveal it to Charlotte?’ But Marvik already knew the answers. ‘That first text message was sent to Charlotte just before Blackerman’s son’s funeral, after Charlotte had applied to find out where Blackerman was serving his sentence, and the next when she was due to come over to visit the prison. The killer believes Paul told Charlotte something and she visited the prison to check it out with Blackerman. But she never mentioned anything to me, except to say that Blackerman told her he was innocent and she believed him.’

  ‘Perhaps that was enough to stir things up. To make it uncomfortable for the killer.’

  ‘But why me?’

  Crowder said nothing, just waited for Marvik to get there on his own. His fists clenched. ‘The bastard’s elected me to be framed for Charlotte’s abduction.’

  ‘And possible murder.’

  ‘Because he knows about our previous relationship.’

  ‘You’ve also suffered a brain injury and you’ve had psychiatric help.’

  ‘That means I’m fair game, does it?’ Marvik declared hotly.

  ‘It means others might think you unstable. You have also been treated at the hospital where Charlotte works, you’re single, and you live on the Isle of Wight.’

  ‘It’s someone I know?’ Marvik said, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘Anyone can find out these things,’ Crowder dismissed. ‘But now that you are involved – and I don’t think you have abducted and killed Charlotte – I’d like your help in trying to find her and I believe we can only do that by discovering what really happened to Esther Shannon in November 1997. If you ask enough questions and stir things up—’

  ‘The killer will come after me. You want me to act as bait.’
>
  ‘Yes.’

  ‘While still being under suspicion of being involved?’

  ‘If the Birmingham and Navy Police come to the same conclusion as I have previously illustrated.’

  ‘And you trust me?’

  ‘I’ve seen your service record.’ Crowder left a second or two’s pause before continuing. ‘This will involve danger. If Blackerman is innocent, as he claims, then the real killer of Esther Shannon has killed at least once, probably more, and he will kill again. I think you can handle it.’

  Marvik took a breath. He wasn’t afraid of danger. He was afraid of botching it. Crowder must know about Harry Salcombe’s death. But what if he did? All that mattered was finding Charlotte and hopefully still alive, although if what Crowder said was true it might already be too late.

  ‘OK.’

  Crowder nodded and briskly continued. ‘We know from our prison intelligence officers that Charlotte visited Blackerman in prison and that you also visited Parkhurst prison yesterday and requested that your name be given to Blackerman with a request that he see you. That has not yet been passed on. It could be later, depending on what you discover. We know Blackerman claims that he didn’t kill Esther Shannon but he offers up no further information on who he suspects or who he knows for certain did it.’

  ‘Perhaps because he doesn’t have that knowledge.’

  ‘We think he does and that he’s protecting someone who is now getting very nervous that he might be exposed.’

  ‘But why go to prison for this person? And keep silent all these years?’

  ‘That’s what you need to find out.’

  ‘It must be a very powerful secret for him to have kept his mouth shut for seventeen years.’

  ‘He might not have had much choice. Either that or death.’

  Marvik recalled what Charlotte had told him. ‘Blackerman was a chaplain. Surely a man of God wouldn’t fear death.’ The chaplains he’d met hadn’t. They were tough, brave buggers – David Treagust included or rather especially.

  ‘Then perhaps he fears something more than death.’