The taxi deposited him at the northern edge of the hamlet of Steepleridge and Marvik set out along the tree-lined country lane to where he could see the square church tower on a slight knoll to the south-west. Behind him rose the Purbeck Downs and around him rolling open farmland was punctuated by the occasional hedgerow, clumps of trees and roaming sheep. Five miles to the south was the sea. He couldn’t see it from here but there was a luminous silver glow in the distance that belied its presence. The lane was deserted, as were many of the grey Purbeck stone cottages, interspersed with the white Portland stoned ones and some thatched whitewashed properties that dated back to the 1600s. The pub was one such building but here, at least, there were signs of life. In front of it were parked several expensive cars. He might strike lucky and find one or more of the older customers propping up the bar who might remember the original Bradley Pulford – it was a small enough place for everyone to know everyone – but he didn’t think anyone would recall a man from 1989 who had passed this way and perhaps stopped to study the grave or ask about its occupant. If he had.
The twelfth-century church was set back off the road and approached via an ancient lychgate with a sign proclaiming it was the Church of St Michael and that services were held at nine fifteen every Sunday. It was rare that he attended church and then only when on service in the Marines, or to funerals and on a couple of occasions to colleagues’ weddings. His non-attendance didn’t mean he didn’t believe. Part of him would like to. He’d witnessed enough death and carnage to hope that somewhere there was something better than the huge cock-up they all made of their lives but he wasn’t sure, and thinking about it only led him to bouts of unease. David Treagust, the navy chaplain, was the closest Marvik had come to God, and that was without him ever mentioning Him.
The church was surrounded by gravestones, most of them ancient, ivy-clad, leaning and illegible. He had no idea where the Pulford of 1959 was buried so he began to quarter it methodically. He was alone but even if anyone was watching him they’d think he was looking from idle curiosity or researching family history. There were some large family plots which spanned the generations from the 1800s to the 1960s and there was an elaborate memorial to the Wellmore family who had obviously been the big shots in these parts. The last one he could see having been buried here was in 1933. There was no grave with the name of Bradley Pulford in front of the church or on its eastern flank, so Marvik headed for the rear where he noted the tombstones were more recent.
He scoured the names and memorials on the headstones and soon found what he was seeking. It was in the second to last row that bordered a field, sandwiched between the grave of Elizabeth Jilley, born 1905 died 1958, and George Gurney, born 1938 died 1959. The grass around all the graves had been cut. There were no flowers on Bradley Pulford’s grave, or the others in the row, but that was hardly surprising given the length of time they’d been dead. Someone, though, had cared for the young man who had died in Singapore in 1959 because his headstone wasn’t the bland basic statement as displayed on his neighbours. Marvik read the inscription with interest.
‘Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end.’ And beneath it another: ‘I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.’
He considered this. So this Bradley Pulford had had an affinity with the sea, like the one who had shown up along the coast in 1989. Perhaps they were father and son. Had this Pulford been a fisherman like the Killbecks? But he couldn’t have been fishing in Singapore when he died. And it was highly doubtful he’d have been there on holiday in 1959 when only the wealthy took holidays to exotic places, and the Singapore of the fifties had not been on the holiday itinerary with the trouble there had been in Malaya.
Marvik took a photograph of the headstone with his mobile phone and made his way around to the front of the church where he almost collided with a woman emerging from it. Hastily, he apologized.
‘No need.’ She smiled at him. ‘I was miles away. I should have looked where I was going. Have you come to view the church?’
‘No, the graveyard.’
She cocked a quizzical eyebrow at him. She was in her early sixties, smartly dressed in a navy blue coat, with a patterned scarf at her neck. Her hair was short and silver blonde.
‘Do you have a relative buried here?’ she enquired politely.
‘No, just someone I was told about recently and I was curious,’ he hedged, weighing up how much to tell her. ‘Bradley Pulford. He died in Singapore in 1959.’
‘Oh, Bradley, yes.’
Surprised, he said, ‘You knew him?’
‘Of him. I’m not quite that old.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’
But she smiled and waved aside his apology. ‘I’m Irene Templeton, the church warden.’
‘Art Marvik.’ He returned her smile.
‘Steepleridge is a very small place, as you can see, Mr Marvik. Everyone knew everyone in 1959 when Bradley died. I was only five years old. It’s rather different now with so many of our old cottages and outlying houses occupied by second homeowners who come down from London for the occasional weekend, in the summer holidays and at Christmas, which is usually the only time you see them at the church services. The church in 1959 was the lynchpin of the community, like the pub and the village shop, the latter sadly gone, and in the fifties and sixties nearly everyone went to church. There wasn’t a great deal to do on a Sunday except worship and walk. Now there are so many more demands on everyone’s time, and of course so much competition.’
‘Do you know how Bradley died?’
‘Only that it was an accident on board a ship.’
‘He was in the navy?’
‘No. It was on a cargo ship. I remember Bradley was evacuated here from London as a baby with his mother in 1940. A year later she returned to London to meet her husband, who had a forty-eight-hour pass, and they were both killed in an air raid. Bradley was adopted by the couple who had billeted him and his mother.’
‘Are they still alive?’
‘John and Alice Seacombe – no, they died a long time ago. They farmed one of Sir Ambrose Shale’s farms. He used to own a great deal of land around here.’
Marvik knew the name because the Ministry of Defence land adjoined the Shale estate. ‘What made Bradley go to sea?’
‘Adventure? Escape?’ She shrugged.
There came the impatient tooting of a car horn. Marvik followed her glance to the road where he could see a bulky, balding, cross-looking man in an Audi. Her husband, he assumed.
‘Is there anyone I could speak to about Bradley? Anyone who might remember him?’
‘Most of them have either died, left the village or have sadly got dementia.’
The toot sounded again, this time even louder and more frequent. She cast it an anxious and troubled look. ‘I’m sorry – I have to go.’
So, dead end on that score but then he hadn’t really expected much, although he had learned some new information.
He headed for the pub, hoping that one of its regulars might recall Bradley Pulford but the moment he entered the hostelry built in 1640, as the stone to the right of the door proclaimed, he knew he’d find no ageing local propping up this bar. The inside had clearly seen several revamps since it was built and, apart from the old flagstone floor and the large inglenook fireplace complete with log fire, its latest reincarnation resembled the trendy bar in Swanage he’d been inside yesterday after the funeral. The clientele looked to be of the same ilk and, judging by their accents and dress, they were what Irene Templeton had referred to as ‘second homeowners’.
Marvik bought a non-alcoholic beer from a barmaid who looked more like sixteen than eighteen and enquired if they ever got any locals in. ‘Elderly ones, I mean,’ he quickly added when she looked at him askance as if to say who do you think all these people are then? She still didn’t seem to understand the question but fetched the landlord, who proceeded to tell him how he’d spent a fortune on renovating the place, added boutique en-suite bed and breakfast accommodation, recruited a top-class chef and was pleased to say he’d completely turned the place around from the dim hovel it had once been, all horse brasses, hunting pictures, patterned carpets and mahogany. If there were any elderly drinkers left in the hamlet then Marvik thought they must imbibe at home because, at the prices this place charged, he would too.
Outside, he hesitated before calling a taxi, thinking that he’d prefer to walk back to Swanage and work off some excess energy. But the decision lay with Strathen and what he had unearthed and whether it needed prompt action. Marvik called him and relayed what he’d learned.
Strathen said, ‘If the accident was on board a British ship then it will be listed in the Registry of Shipping and Seamen. It holds details of deaths at sea from 1939 to 1995, including those that occurred in overseas ports. But I won’t be able to get access to it until Tuesday. The files are held at the National Archives at Kew and they’re closed on Mondays. I can’t access the files via the Internet, but I’ll do a bit of browsing in case someone’s put something out there. I can’t find anything on Joshua Nunton. His death isn’t registered so for all I know he could have been committed to a psychiatric hospital or emigrated. He could even have been killed and his body never discovered. Or he could have died more recently, such as two months ago.’
‘You think he could be the body washed up at Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight?’ asked Marvik, heading back down the village street in the direction of the sea.
‘Why not? The DNA matched Jensen’s but how do we know that Jensen is really the phoney Bradley Pulford’s son? He could be Joshua’s kid. Theory one: Stacey was putting it about, keeping both Joshua Nunton and our phoney Pulford happy. Pulford found out, killed Nunton then took off in a panic after burying or disposing of the body. Theory two: Nunton killed Pulford because he was jealous. Then he took off and the DNA proving that Jensen is related to the remains found on the Isle of Wight show that he is in fact related to Joshua Nunton and not Pulford. The Killbecks could even be involved in Pulford’s murder. They hated him muscling in, disturbing the rhythm of their lives. Or perhaps he discovered them smuggling or fiddling their fish quota and threatened to tell. Perhaps they didn’t want an outsider marrying the fair Stacey. They arranged it between them and ditched Pulford’s body in the English Channel. And we’ve only got Crowder’s word that the body washed up on the Isle of Wight is that of a man who went by the name of Bradley Pulford. How does he know that for sure? I doubt any ID the man had been carrying would have survived. And if the Killbecks discovered that Nunton was returning to confess his sins maybe they decided one more murder wouldn’t matter. They didn’t want to be implicated. They could have arranged to meet him and dumped his body overboard from their fishing boat in January.’
Marvik considered this. ‘The Killbecks are clearly uneasy about something. But that doesn’t make them killers.’ Had Adam Killbeck been the man on the motorbike, though, who had followed him yesterday? ‘I’ll email you the picture of Bradley’s headstone,’ he continued. ‘There’s an interesting inscription on it. Someone thought enough of him to shell out for an expensive memorial – it could have been his adoptive parents, John and Alice Seacombe. The woman I spoke to at the church said they died some time ago but I didn’t get the chance to ask her when – she had an impatient husband waiting for her.’
‘I’ll check it out.’
Marvik rang off and made for the coastal path eastwards back to Swanage. His photographic memory conjured up the inscription word for word. ‘Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end.’ It sounded familiar. He searched his memory for it. He was certain he’d heard it before. Yes, he had. At another funeral – that of a former Marine colleague. It was Shakespeare. He frowned, puzzled. It was a literary quotation, which was perhaps surprising for the Seacombes, a farming couple, although that was a gross presumption because for all he knew they might have had a love of literature and the works of the Bard. And the other inscription on the gravestone: ‘I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.’ Where was that text from? Did it matter?
Perhaps the sea had been Bradley’s first love; it had certainly been almost his last. Maybe he’d always had a hankering to be on it, as Marvik had. It was in his blood and maybe Bradley’s real father, the one who had died in the Blitz, had been on leave from the navy.
With athletic ease, Marvik hiked along the top of the hills and then cut down on to the coastal path. It was mid-afternoon and he could see a fishing boat out to sea and a leisure cruiser heading west towards Portland and Weymouth. The sky was overcast and the sea choppy with the rising wind. He marched onwards, thinking over what he and Strathen had gleaned so far, but none of it made any sense. There were too many gaps and they would continue to flounder unless Strathen could throw up some leads or Crowder gave them more information.
It was just after five when he reached the bay. The Killbecks’ fishing boat was there but there was no sign of them or their pick-up truck. He headed into the town and found a small Italian restaurant. While he waited for his pasta to arrive he thought of the inscription on the headstone and took out his phone, where he entered the text into the search engine. It was the opening lines of a poem entitled ‘Gone from My Sight’ by Henry van Dyke, an American professor, poet and clergyman who had died in 1933. Maybe the Seacombes had got it from a book of funeral poems from the library. Perhaps the works of Van Dyke were a favourite of theirs, as was Shakespeare, or perhaps the vicar had suggested it. Or perhaps the title ‘Gone from My Sight’ was the real message the Seacombes had wanted to convey.
He replaced his phone and attacked his meal, noting that there were only a handful of customers in the restaurant and no one remotely interested in him. Why should there be? But he recalled the motorbike which he was almost certain had been stalking him yesterday. Could he have been mistaken? Maybe, because there had been no sign of anyone following him today. But perhaps that was because the motorbike rider had been Adam Killbeck and he had been out fishing all day. The build was right from the glimpses he’d had of the rider, who had been tall and lean. But Marvik thought Adam more broad-shouldered than the man he’d seen. And he’d witnessed that brief look of surprise on Adam’s features this morning when he had alighted from his tender on the shore before suspicion had set in. So maybe Adam hadn’t known he’d arrived at Swanage by boat.
It was dark and drizzling by the time Marvik left the restaurant and made his way through the almost deserted streets. As he turned into the road that led parallel to the bay and eventually to the lifeboat station, he considered the image of Bradley Pulford that Matthew Killbeck had drawn for him earlier that day and the emotions he’d exhibited when speaking of Pulford: resentment, anger, hatred even. Maybe Shaun was right and the Killbecks had killed him, if not in 1990 then more recently, in January.
Through his thoughts he caught the sound of a motorbike and one whose engine he instantly recognized. He dashed a glance over his shoulder and his heart quickened. Yes, there it was cruising slowly some distance behind him, and he was certain it was the same one that had stalked him yesterday. Astride it was a darkly clad figure, the face hidden by the visor, but Marvik could swear it was the same rider. He picked up his pace. The road was deserted both ahead and behind. He swiftly calculated that he had another three hundred yards before the entrance to the lifeboat station and the shore. Glancing back, the motorbike was keeping pace with him but still holding back. Marvik knew why. The rider was judging it perfectly – there would be a moment when no one would witness what he was about to do and that moment would soon be here. It would come when he turned down towards the lifeboat and he’d be alone in the dark close to the shore.
Adrenaline surged through his veins but instead of instinctively breaking into a run he forced himself to maintain the same walking pace. Although he was fast and fit, he wasn’t as fast as that motorbike and he calculated that it was better to preserve as much energy as he could in case he needed it on the shore. One hundred, two hundred – he mentally counted down until … He sprinted. The roar of the motorbike burst through the night. It was deafening. In a few seconds it would be on top of him. If he glanced back he’d be a dead man. He still might be, he thought, running hard, his feet striking the tarmac, his heart pounding, his blood pumping. To acknowledge the wound in his leg would be death. To think of anything other than reaching the shore, darkness and safety would be fatal. He had a second – maybe two if he was lucky. Two seconds between life and death. It wasn’t much but it was all he had.
He swung into the road, running hard, past the empty units, his goal the small stretch of shingle shore where his tender and the Killbecks’ fishing boat lay. He jumped down from the small ledge and rolled on to the ground as the rush of air brushed past him. The bike screeched to a halt. Marvik leapt up. Would the rider risk coming on to the stones? But no, the bike swung round, the rider revved up and was gone with a deep roar.
Marvik let out a long exhalation of breath. He’d thought the day had been full of blanks and getting nowhere. He’d been wrong.