One of Us Is Dead

26 Sunday 2 October 2022

‘Do they have snakes, Daddy?’ Noah asked.

‘Snakes?’

‘In the zoo. Do they? Do they have big ones?’ Noah, five years old, with unruly fair hair and deep blue eyes, was almost impossibly cute, Roy Grace thought, and because of that, almost impossible to punish when he was naughty — which he was quite a lot. He adored the boy with all his heart. And at times it felt that maybe Noah was a gift in place of Bruno, the son he had lost.

Grace smiled at him. He sat at the breakfast bar in their cottage, barefoot, in jeans and a sweatshirt, the main section of the Sunday Times spread out in front of him, his ever-present job phone underneath it somewhere, and Noah perched beside him, hyper-excited, firing questions at him repetitive fashion, about the visit to Drusillas Park zoo at Alfriston that he and Cleo had promised the kids today.

Molly, on her mat on the floor near them, was occupied with her animal farm, occasionally pressing a button that produced the bleat of a sheep, a moo, a cluck or honk or grunt. Cleo, who was happily not on call this weekend, sat at the kitchen table in jeans and a baggy sweater, with a large mug of coffee, reading The Week.

‘They have snakes at Drusillas that could swallow a boy your size in one gulp!’ Grace said.

Noah shrank away, raising his hands protectively. ‘Nooooo!’

Grace nodded. ‘They particularly like little boys who ask lots of questions.’

Noah gave him a sideways look and pursed his lips. Then he frowned. ‘I bet one could swallow you too, Daddy!’

‘Your father would put it in handcuffs first,’ Cleo said.

Noah had an expressive face and none more so when he looked genuinely surprised. ‘Put a snake in handcuffs? Wouldn’t he wriggle out of them?’

Grace smiled and tenderly tapped the boy’s cheek with his knuckles. ‘Smart thinking — he might!’ He was in a happy frame of mind. Feeling energized after an eight-mile run with Humphrey earlier this morning, and enjoying what promised to be a precious and all-too-rare Sunday with his family, having left Glenn in charge of Operation Meadow today. Kaitlynn, their nanny, was back in the States visiting family and would be gone at least a few weeks, depending how the visit went.

Half an hour earlier, he’d collected six eggs from the hen coop, and had scrambled five of them for Cleo and himself, serving them up with wholegrain sourdough toast along with some grilled tomatoes and baby spinach. For Noah and Molly, he’d made French toast — dipping both sides of the bread in egg, frying it and then dousing it in maple syrup. Noah was still scraping every tiny bit off his plate.

Grace turned to his favourite columnist, Matthew Syed, and had just started to read his piece on what he felt had gone most wrong with post-Brexit Britain when his job phone rang. Irked at the intrusion, he retrieved it from under the paper, and answered. It was Glenn Branson. ‘Sorry to wake you, boss,’ he said.

‘Just woken yourself, have you?’ Grace looked at the kitchen clock. It showed 9.50.

‘Yeah, yeah! How’s your morning going?’

‘Noah wants to know if it’s possible to handcuff a snake?’

‘Of course, we’ve nicked plenty of reptiles in our time, haven’t we?’

‘That’s the right answer. Anything else on your mind?’

‘Actually, yes. You tasked Jack yesterday with finding the whereabouts of the yacht, Eloise III, and you told him you wanted to speak to the yacht’s captain and to the crew member who raised the man overboard alarm on Rufus Rorke.’

‘Correct.’

‘Jack found out the Eloise III is currently in port in Cannes, having routine maintenance before repositioning to the Caribbean for the winter. We’ve made contact with the captain, name of Richard Le Quesne, who is currently at his residence in Antibes and is happy to speak to you in the next hour — before he leaves for Nice airport on a week’s holiday. I have a number for him.’

Grace tapped it into his phone.

‘The crew member who was present when Rorke went overboard is called Lance Sharpus-Jones. By happy chance, he has a flat in Sussex — in Bosham, near Chichester. He is happy to come in for an interview, the only problem being he’s flying out to be caretaker of the boat on Monday morning; he’s on an 11 a.m. flight from Gatwick to Nice, he’d have to come in super-early — like 7 a.m. If that’s not too early for you?’

Grace suppressed a grin. ‘Hope it’s not too early for you, either, as I’d like you with me — as my Deputy SIO.’ He enjoyed the grunt of dismay that came through the receiver.

After he ended the call he went up to his den, with his view out over the hens in the rear garden and the slope of the hill beyond, and dialled the number Glenn had given him for the yacht skipper.

It was answered after two rings by a posh English voice. ‘Hello?’

‘Mr Le Quesne, my name’s Detective Superintendent Grace from the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team. I’m sorry to disturb you on a Sunday, but we have rather an urgent situation. I understand you are a professional yacht skipper and you are currently employed by the owners of a yacht called Eloise III?’

His reply was polite, but tinged with suspicion. ‘That is correct, Detective Superintendent, is there a problem?’

‘Do you recall clients who chartered the Eloise III about two years ago, called Rufus and Fiona Rorke?’

After a moment’s hesitation, Le Quesne said, ‘Yes, indeed I do. I remember them well. Mr and Mrs Rorke. Such a tragic situation. How can I be of help?’

‘They’d chartered the Eloise III for two weeks cruising around the Caribbean, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were just over a week into the cruise, I believe.’

‘Correct.’

‘So you would have had time to observe the Rorkes, I imagine.’

‘Meaning what, exactly?’ Le Quesne asked.

‘In your opinion, did everything seem all right with their relationship?’

He hesitated for a moment. ‘To be honest, our clients are all extremely rich people who very much tend to keep to themselves, whether on their own or with friends. But a couple of my crew did say to me that they’d heard them arguing pretty ferociously.’

‘On the night he went overboard?’

‘No, a couple of times during the previous days. May I ask why you are raking this up now, Detective Superintendent?’

‘Well, this may sound a little strange, but we have reason to believe that Mr Rufus Rorke may still be alive.’

‘Really?’ the yacht captain exclaimed. ‘That certainly does sound very strange indeed. I’m afraid that’s utterly impossible!’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, for starters, on the night he went overboard, Mr Rorke and I had quite an argument. He wanted us to sail to Grenada, so they could meet some friends who were holidaying there. It’s quite a long stretch and quite normal for people chartering the yacht to get passages like that done at night, so they would arrive in daylight. But the forecast was poor — force seven, gusting eight to nine. I strongly advised it would be better to spend another day in port in Barbados, as the weather would be improving the next day, but Mr Rorke was insistent — and I’m paid to, within reason, do what the client wants.’

‘Understood,’ Grace said.

‘Mr and Mrs Rorke went to a restaurant in Barbados — the Cliff, from memory — and returned very late, both somewhat the worse for wear from booze, if I’m not giving any confidences away?’

‘You are not giving any confidences away, Mr Le Quesne. This is a murder inquiry and I’m grateful for all information.’

He sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Murder? Seriously?’

‘If you could just tell me everything you can remember about that evening — night.’

‘Yes, right, I see. Well, on Mr Rorke’s insistence we sailed from Bridgetown soon after he and his wife returned to the yacht. The sea state was fairly choppy and for that reason I stayed at the helm myself rather than handing over to another crew member. It was about thirty minutes after we’d left Bridgetown harbour that the man overboard alarm was raised. This would have been around 1.45 a.m. At which time we were five nautical miles south-west of Bridgetown, from memory.’

‘The alarm was raised by a crew member called Lance Sharpus-Jones?’

‘Yes, a very reliable chap, who’d been a member of my crew for several years. I know he gave the Barbados Police a statement. He was due to take over from me, and had gone to the stern of the ship for a cigarette, I believe, at around 1.40 a.m. From memory, a very drunken Mr Rorke had barged into him, very apologetically, as the yacht had lurched in the swell. Mr Rorke then stood some distance from him, leaning against the deck-rail, and said something that Lance Sharpus-Jones didn’t catch, then lit a cigarette. As I understand it, a few minutes later Rorke leaned over the rail and began retching. Lance turned away, then a moment later he heard a splash and a yell — a shout for help. He immediately followed the man-overboard drill — checking his watch to mark the time, throwing a lifebelt, shining a torch and raising the alarm. We spent the next five hours, until dawn, circling the area without any success.’

‘Is there any possibility he could have swum to the shore, Mr Le Quesne?’ Grace asked.

‘In my opinion, zero. To be precise, a long way less than zero. We were, as I have said, five nautical miles from the nearest land, in rough sea, and with the additional hazard of sharks. What I can say is that, after thirty years of skippering yachts around these waters, I do know if someone does go overboard on any vessel at night, there’s a very slim chance indeed of them surviving even in a calm sea. Without a buoyancy aid, even if he had been a strong swimmer, Mr Rorke would have stood no chance in that sea. The waves breaking over his head would have drowned him in a short space of time.’

‘All right,’ Grace said. ‘Let me ask you another question — what if he didn’t actually go overboard? Could he have concealed himself somewhere on the boat? Or been concealed by an accomplice?’

‘I’m afraid that’s being fanciful, Detective. After we abandoned the search and the Barbados coastguard took over, we returned to Bridgetown, where the police then made a thorough search of the yacht. There aren’t that many places you could hide on a yacht her size, and then you’d have the additional difficulty of getting ashore without being seen.’

‘That’s very helpful. If I can ask you one more thing: this crew member, Lance Sharpus-Jones, would you say he was trustworthy?’

‘How well do any of us know anyone, Detective Grace? All I can say is he was my Number Two. I would have trusted him to sail that yacht anywhere, in any weather, while I slept. He’s a good man.’

‘Not someone who might easily be coerced, perhaps by money, into helping out in a major deception?’

‘Good grief, no.’

Grace thanked him and ended the call. He went back downstairs to his family. But, as was the case most of the time in his job, Operation Meadow had got to him, got under his skin. He enjoyed the pub lunch in Alfriston, where Noah messily ate most of a huge pizza, he had a beef roast and Cleo a vegetarian one, which she shared with Molly, and then an afternoon at the zoo, where he carried Molly in his arms.

But he only enjoyed it with one half of his focus. The other half had been on the job. Trying to work out how a man could have been alive, two years after vanishing overboard from a yacht.

Was the skipper, Richard Le Quesne, lying? Or his Number Two, as he called Lance Sharpus-Jones? Had Rufus Rorke given them both a massive bung to cover for him? To fake his death?

He thought about the further evidence. The torn remnants of Rufus Rorke’s expensive jacket, recovered by a local fisherman called John Baker. Rorke’s DNA was obtained from it, as well as the pen his wife had given him as an anniversary present, still zipped inside an internal pocket. A marine biologist and a highly regarded forensic orthodontist had both confirmed the tears on the jacket to be compatible with successional tiger shark bite marks.

All the evidence pointed, conclusively, to Rufus Rorke being dead.

Apart from that footage of him, two years later, walking along a supermarket aisle.