Faraday 01 The Gigabyte Detective (22 page)

Inspector Paulson had phoned ahead to warn the coastguards at Start Point that he was on his way. He found the gate was unlocked at the top of the roadway along the peninsula which led to the Point. He shut the gate behind him and drove down the narrow lane, which was cut along the side of the headland, to the group of buildings sheltering behind the lighthouse.

The gates to the coastguard complex stood open. As he pulled into the little yard a square man with a dark beard and a blue fisherman’s sweater stepped out of the nearest door.

Stafford got out of the car. “Adam Shakespeare?”

The man nodded curtly and accepted the proffered hand-shake with some reluctance.

“You want to speak to me about the Billiere boat which ran aground on Slapton Sands?” Shakespeare obviously didn’t bother with preliminaries. “Don’t forget that were two year ago.”

“I know,” agreed Paulson. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions about what you remember when you boarded the boat.”

The coastguard shook his head doubtfully. “I can’t promise nothin’”

He didn’t invite the policeman into any of the buildings behind him. So Stafford had no alternative but to continue the questioning outside. “Do you remember where the boat ran aground?”

“Over there.” Shakespeare pointed across the wide bay to the long beach about five miles away. Then even he seemed to admit that he wasn’t giving enough information. He went and leaned on the low wall, looking fiercely into the distance as though trying to see through time. “It was about quarter of a mile north of the main car park.” He nodded to himself. “Billiere was lucky.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“When I got there,” said the coastguard, “I found the boat had gone bow first onto the beach. It must have run aground very slowly at about low tide. The shore-line shelves quite steeply at that point. That meant, as the tide rose, that the twin screws kept the bow nudging up the beach. The engines were low on fuel and they were throttled right back. Gradually the boat swung until its starboard side was against the beach. The starboard screw must have bit into the fine gravel and stalled the starboard engine. Even at such a slow speed, he was lucky it didn’t bugger up the prop-shaft. When I got there the port engine was still running, but it was nearly out of fuel.”

Paulson was puzzled. “So what did that mean? When you’re out in a boat like that, do you normally run it with the engines throttled back?”

“You only throttle back for two reasons,” said Shakespeare. “When you’re manoeuvring, like going into harbour or coming alongside another vessel, or when you want to stay virtually still but just maintain steerage way - perhaps if you’re fishing or something like that.”

“Like having a bonk down below,” said the inspector, almost to himself.

“What?” The other man looked at him sharply, not quite sure whether to laugh or be shocked.

“Never mind.” Paulson leaned on the wall and looked at him. “What sort of speed through the water would the boat have made with the engines throttled back like that?”

The coastguard shrugged. “I dunno. One, two knots maybe - not more than that.”

“If someone had fallen overboard at that speed, would they have been able to swim back to the boat and climb on board?”

“Depends on how good a swimmer they were, but it’s unlikely,” said Shakespeare. “Even if they did, they’d find it difficult to grab hold of something and pull themselves aboard, with their clothes weighed down with water and the shock of the cold sea water.” He paused and thought. “The boat had a transom ladder but it wasn’t lowered. I know, ‘cause I had to release it myself before I could climb aboard.”

Paulson nodded. “When you went aboard, how did you find the controls? I believe the wheel wasn’t tied.”

“Didn’t need to be,” said the man. “It’s one of them modern, self-centring types - that means you can let go the wheel while you’re doing something else and the boat will keep going in a straight line. As I said, it’s lucky for Billiere that it was.” He checked over the scene again in his mind. “The throttles were set to run very slow. The GPS was switched off. But you’d expect that within sight of the coast on a clear night like that.” He looked up. “Oh - the other thing was that there were no lights on.”

“What does that mean?”

Shakespeare looked at him. “Either the woman was a damned fool or she left the boat before it got dark.”

“So,” said the policeman, “she leaves the marina at Torquay at about seven-thirty. She rounds Berry Head and passes the mouth of the Dart - how far is that?”

“Oh - ‘bout fifteen to eighteen miles.”

“Right - how long would that take her?”

“Depends on how fast she was travelling,” said the coastguard. “Those things’ll shift, you know, if they wants to.”

“Let’s say she was travelling at half-throttle.”

The man grimaced, concentrating on his calculations. “I suppose she’d be doing about ten knots. It’d be high tide about nine - mainly slack water.” He nodded approvingly to himself. “So I’d say one and a half to two hours.”

“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 lowlands 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.”