“Then I’m afraid I can’t help. You say there were squatters living on the boats? Perhaps they started the fire?”
“That’s highly unlikely, given that two of them died.”
“I wish I could help.”
“How did you come to be the owner of the boats?”
West swirled his drink in his glass. “They were my father’s,” he said. “I suppose I inherited them.”
“But you had no interest in his business?”
“No. He lived to be ninety-six years old, Mr. Banks. He died just two years ago, though he had been uncommunicative for some time. I know he was in the haulage business, but believe it or not, I didn’t even know about those two boats until the Waterways people got in touch with me, after his death. I know I should have delegated, put someone on it, had something done, but I had more important things on my mind at the time. I didn’t imagine they’d be doing any harm just sitting there.”
“There was no reason you wanted to keep them?”
“Good Lord, no.”
“Or sell them?”
“I suppose I might have got around to that eventually.”
“Were they insured?”
“I imagine so. My father was a thorough man before his illness.”
“But you don’t know for how much?”
“I have no idea. I suppose the executor of his estate would know.”
“Do you know of anybody who might have had a reason to set fire to them?”
“No. Surely you’re not suggesting some sort of insurance fraud?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” said Banks. It was a patently absurd idea, anyway. West probably made a few billion a year, and the insurance on the boats wasn’t likely to amount to more than twenty or thirty thousand. Still, stranger things had happened. The rich don’t get richer by missing opportunities to make even more money. Or West might simply have got someone to torch them to get them off his hands.
“It’s funny,” said West, “but now you bring it up, I actually did receive an offer to buy one of the boats a few months ago. My secretary brought it to my attention, but I’m afraid I didn’t take the offer very seriously.”
“I thought you didn’t need the money.”
West laughed. “My dear man, that’s no reason to let oneself be taken for a fool.”
“How long ago was it?” Banks asked.
“Oh, not long. October, perhaps.”
“Do you think you could find the letter?”
West called in his secretary, a buxom woman in a no-nonsense pinstriped skirt and matching jacket, who disappeared for a few moments and returned with a buff folder.
“How did the letter come to you?” Banks asked the secretary before she scurried off.
“It was forwarded through British Waterways,” she said. She looked at Sir Laurence for guidance. He nodded, and she passed the folder to Banks. It contained just one sheet of paper, a letter dated the sixth of October. It was brief and to the point.
Someone wanted to buy the southernmost narrow boat – Tom’s boat – moored on the dead-end branch off the Eastvale Canal, near Molesby. He was willing to pay ten thousand pounds – such a low sum, he explained, because the boat needed a lot of work – and that someone was Thomas McMahon himself.
Mark could smell and hear the sea as he made his way down the hill to the sands from Scarborough bus station just after eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning. After a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and grilled tomatoes, he had paid his bill in Helmsley and wandered toward the bus stops in the square. There he had caught the half-past-nine bus and stared out of the window at the bleak, misty moorland landscape to the north, until the bus headed down from the moors near Pickering.
His plan, inasmuch as he had one, was to find a job as soon as possible. The money he had stolen from Clive would enable him to get a roof over his head and food in his belly for a while, at least. But he would need something more dependable in the long term. If there was going to be a long term.
Mark didn’t know why, but he felt both apprehension and numbness at the same time. A part of him was numb because he had lost Tina, yet another part of him was afraid of what lay around the next corner, who might be lying in wait for him. There was still the guilt, too. If only he’d been on the boat with Tina instead of with that slut Mandy. Anger raged inside him somewhere, unfocused yet growing stronger. He might have killed Clive, he realized, if they hadn’t slowed at the bend and he’d been sharp enough to seize his opportunity to grab the money and get away. He remembered what the policeman had said, about the fire not being an accident. That meant someone had killed Tina, whether she was the intended victim or not. The only person he could think of who had a reason to kill Tina was Patrick Aspern, and when Mark thought of Aspern, he felt his rage surge up again.
A cold wind blew off the North Sea, pushing inland a mass of cloud the color of dirty dishwater. There was no blue to be seen anywhere on the horizon, no rays of sunshine lancing through to make diamonds dance on the water; the whole world was wrapped in a gray shroud.
Down on the prom, all the amusements were closed for the winter, the cafés and fish and chip shops shut up, Jimmy Corrigan’s, the Parade Snack Bar, the sands deserted except for a man in a hooded overcoat walking his dog, hunched forward against the wind. The tide was high and waves like molten metal crashed on the beach, churning the brown sand. One or two other people were walking along the prom, old couples, a young family. Probably people who lived in town, Mark thought. After all, Scarborough was a big place, and the people who lived there had to go on even when the tourist season was over.
A solitary gray Vectra was parked across the street, outside the Ghost Train, with two men in it drinking tea and eating Kit Kats. They both glanced toward Mark, and he kept his face averted. He couldn’t tell whether he recognized them or not, but there was no sense in falling right into their hands. Maybe two people had set fire to the boats, not just one, and these could be the ones. Hands in his pockets, he strolled on beside the harbor, where the nets were stacked and the fishing boats were all moored for the winter.
He tried to light a cigarette, but the wind was too strong, and after three matches he gave up. He’d have one later in a warm pub. It felt good to be near the sea. He didn’t know why, but the sight of the water stretching out as far as the eye could see, until it met the sky way in the distance, evoked a feeling of awe in him: the way it was always changing, the surface swelling and dipping, the scudding whitecaps and huge breakers. It put you in your place, put things in perspective. He could watch it forever.
He imagined sailors years ago, in wooden ships with canvas sails bellied out, tossing on seas like this, no land in sight, and thought that was what he would have liked to have been if he’d lived then. A sailor on a whaling ship. Not throwing the harpoons, because he didn’t particularly like the idea of killing whales, but maybe at the wheel, steering the rudder, discovering new worlds. Maybe even now he could join the Merchant Navy, if they’d have him, and spend the rest of his days at sea. The ships were more modern, he knew, but they’d still be at the mercy of the waves.
Out of his peripheral vision, he noticed the Vectra start moving just behind him, to his left. He walked past the empty funfair and onto Marine Drive. The car didn’t overtake him, but kept up a slow, steady pace, about twenty yards behind him. Were they following him? Mark risked a glance back and thought he saw one of them talking into a mobile phone.
Mark felt exposed, out in the open. Marine Drive curved around the base of Castle Hill, with nothing but the steep rocky slope on one side and the cold North Sea on the other. Nowhere to run. The wind howled in his ears and the waves crashed high over the seawall and the metal railings, and Mark was soaked in no time.