“Was he already in the timeshare game then?”

“Oh yeah. That and a few other games as well. Not all of them strictly kosher. As Kerry Foxton found out. To her cost.”

“She’s the girl who died in the diving accident?”

Trathen looked woozily surprised. “Clive really has been shooting his mouth off, hasn’t he? He’s not normally so… free with info.”

“I didn’t get her name from Isbister. I’ve been… asking around.”

“So it seems.” Suspicion was taking lumpen shape in Trathen’s mind, but Harding was prepared to bet he was too drunk to be restrained by it. “Kerry was a nice girl. Just too inquisitive for her own good.” He sighed. “But I suppose that goes with the territory.”

“What territory?”

“Well, she was a journalist.”

“Was she?”

“I should know, shouldn’t I? I fixed it for her to meet Barney. I thought he’d get an ego-stroking profile in one of the Sunday supps out of it. Instead, he got a load of very bad publicity and she got…” Trathen’s voice trailed into silence.

“It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“So the inquest said. When they finally had one. She was a long time dying.”

“You were there when it happened?”

“Yeah.” A jag of painful memory twisted Trathen’s features into a grimace. “I was on the boat.”

“So, was it an accident?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows why Kerry’s oxygen supply malfunctioned? All by itself? Or with a little encouragement?”

“You’re suggesting… she was murdered?”

“I’m suggesting that delving into Barney Tozer’s affairs can be an unhealthy activity. Terminally unhealthy.”

“Come off it. You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t I?” Trathen’s gaze switched suddenly to a figure behind Harding. He raised a hand in half-hearted greeting. “Evening, Darren.”

“Hi, Ray.” A gangly, carrot-haired young man in jeans and garishly logoed zip-top hovered at Harding’s elbow. “Got a light?”

Trathen obliged with a light for Darren’s rollup. Leaning forward to accept it, Darren, who was clearly not having his first drink of the day either, contrived to slop lager from his crookedly held glass down Harding’s jacket.

“Shit, man, I’m sorry” Darren slurred, grabbing a bar-towel to mop up the spillage.

“It’s OK,” said Harding, smiling grimly as he repulsed the heavy-handed dabs of the towel. “I’ll be fine.”

“There’s not that much really.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“OK, man. Cool.”

“Why don’t we sit over there?” Trathen jerked his head towards a table by the window facing onto the street. “We’ll be out of harm’s way.”

Darren made a wavering peace-be-with-you gesture with his cigarette hand as they went, then plonked himself on a bar-stool next to someone else he knew.

“Sorry about that,” said Trathen when they had settled.

“Never mind.”

“Where were we?”

“You were telling me you think Kerry Foxton was murdered because she knew something to Barney Tozer’s disadvantage about his business activities.”

“I was telling you I thought it was possible. Distinctly possible. There were sides to Starburst International I knew nothing about-except that it was best to know nothing about them. Only Barney and that slimeball Whybrow know how it all fits together. See…” He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with delight in the intricacy of his conspiracy theory. “Kerry said she’d been sent down to do a piece for the Sunday Times on how the Cornish were dealing with the rush of visitors for the eclipse. But that was bullshit. I checked with them after the accident. Like I should have checked before. They hadn’t sent her. She’d freelanced for them in the past, but her Cornish trip was nothing to do with them. It was all her own idea. I think the eclipse story was cover for her to get close to Barney and learn some of his secrets. And I think she may have succeeded. Worse luck for her.”

“How did this… diving expedition… come about?”

“It was Barney’s idea. I thought he was out to impress Kerry. He seemed to be having a hard time keeping his hands off her. Can’t say I blamed him. She was quite something. Anyway I assumed the trip was intended to boost his action-man credentials. He fixed it with another old school chum of ours, John Metherell. Kerry was certainly keen on the idea. Maybe she thought she could hang another piece for the papers on it. The Association story’s always a good one to rehash.”

“The what?”

“Scilly’s most famous wreck. HMS Association. Flagship of Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell. Foundered on the Gilstone rock and lost with all hands in 1707. Never heard of it?”

“Don’t think so.”

“There was quite a hoo-ha when they located the wreck back in the nineteen sixties. Divers have been exploring it ever since, though all the valuable stuff was brought up years ago. John Metherell lives on St. Mary’s. He’s a real Association buff. Supposed to be writing a book on the subject. Due out next year, for the three hundredth anniversary. Well, it was due out then. Maybe he’s gone off the idea since the accident. I wouldn’t know. We don’t exactly keep in touch. Anyway, he organized the trip and went along for the ride, like I did. He even videoed it.”

“There’s a video of what happened?” Harding tried to sound only mildly curious on the point.

“Not exactly. John was too busy trying to help to do any recording once we knew something was seriously wrong. Not that there was much we could do. We got her breathing. Well, Alf Martyn got her breathing. He was the only one who knew any first aid. But it was obvious she was in a bad way. She never actually spoke. I’m not sure she knew where she was.”

“How did this… Alf Martyn… come to be on board?” “It was his boat. He makes a living out of ferrying tourists round the islands. He had his brother with him as well.”

“But it was just Barney and Kerry who dived to the wreck?”

“Yeah. John and I stayed on the boat with Kerry’s friend, Carol Janes.”

“Carol who?”

“Janes. The future Mrs. Tozer.” Trathen took a deep swallow of beer. “Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?”

Funny how things turn out.” Ray Trathen was right on the money there as far as Harding was concerned. Carol had been on the boat when Kerry Foxton met with her fatal accident. And Carol had been Kerry’s friend before she became Barney Tozer’s wife. She had never mentioned any of this to Harding. She had never breathed a word to him. Maybe she had reckoned he was unlikely to hear of it. Maybe Barney had as well, though he had certainly tempted fate by asking him to go to Penzance: Whatever their calculations, Harding had heard of it now.

Extracting as many details as he could from Trathen had been a delicate exercise. He had not wanted to admit why he was so interested in the part Carol had played in events. Nor had he wanted to reveal Hayley’s role as his informant for fear of causing trouble for her. That consideration had prevented him from probing the question of the switched video. It was hard to imagine it contained anything other than the material Metherell had recorded on the day of the accident. But it was, evidently, not the original. Trathen had referred in passing to that still being in Metherell’s possession.

So, what was the long and short of Trathen’s account of the accident and the background to it? Harding asked himself that question as he walked back to the Mount Prospect through the soft, dank Penzance evening. Kerry Foxton, freelance journalist, proclaiming an interest in the total eclipse of 11 August 1999, arrived in Cornwall from London a couple of weeks beforehand. She spent half her time with her college friend, Carol Janes, on St. Mary’s, where Carol was running a café in Hugh Town, and the other half on the mainland, mostly in Penzance, where Starburst International maintained an office-later closed when its fish-farming interests were disposed of. Barney Tozer was at the time living in a big house near Marazion with a succession of short-stay girlfriends, though he was as often as not abroad on business. Kerry contacted Trathen, then on the Starburst payroll, to suggest profiling his boss. Trathen recommended the idea to Tozer, who agreed and immediately took a shine to Ms. Foxton. She already knew the Association story and he had the means to arrange a dive to the wreck. John Metherell obtained the necessary permit and hired a boat and crew for the trip. Though no diver himself, he was keen to go along in order to visit the stretch of ocean where the subject of his book had gone down.