A Killing Coast (11 page)

‘I don’t know where they are,’ she exhaled in exasperation.

In dangerous silky tones Uckfield said, ‘
If
you could look them out and call us when you’ve found them that would be very helpful.’ He handed across his card.

Her brow furrowed, then she shrugged as if to say please yourself and snatched the card from him. Horton didn’t think they’d get any sight of her photograph albums. Uckfield’s phone rang and he ducked out of the lounge to answer it. A few seconds later Horton heard the outside door open. Clearly Uckfield didn’t want Margaret Yately earwigging the conversation. He said, ‘Did Colin own a laptop computer when you lived together?’ She eyed him as if he’d just asked if her ex-husband had indulged in naked limbo dancing.

‘He wouldn’t even have a mobile phone and I had to throw the television on the tip before he’d buy a new one.’

That confirmed what Hannah Yately had said. Now for the tricky bit. Rising, and extracting a photograph of the dress from his pocket, Horton said, ‘Do you recognize this dress?’

She stared at it, puzzled, and then at Horton. ‘No. Why?’

‘It’s not yours?’

‘I wouldn’t be seen dead in that,’ she declared. ‘It’s very old-fashioned.’

‘It might be something you wore years ago.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she scoffed, stubbing out her cigarette with vigour as her lips curled in a sneer. ‘What’s it got to do with Colin’s death?’

Horton was reluctant to tell her, not because he thought she’d be shocked or upset, but because he could already anticipate her ridicule and he thought she was the type to blab, maybe even tell the national media. He hoped the shame of once being married to someone found dead wearing a woman’s dress might stop her but he doubted it. He could see her playing the role of poor deceived wife. But Cantelli had given him the lead. He said, ‘We found it with your former husband.’

‘What was he doing with that?’

‘We wondered if you might tell us.’

‘No bloody idea.’

‘It wasn’t his mother’s dress?’

‘She’s been dead years and her stuff went to the charity shop.’

There was obviously nothing she could tell them about the dress. Recalling the notes on Yately’s desk, he said, ‘Did Colin ever express an interest in local history?’

‘He liked watching that history channel on television.’

That wasn’t the quite the same thing but it was a link nevertheless, and when you had nothing to go with a link was grabbed like a lifebelt. ‘What about an interest in Ventnor?’ he asked as Uckfield returned. Then Horton remembered something else he read, ‘Or the caves and chines on the Island.’

She eyed him as if he was two sheets to the wind. That was a ‘no’ then. He caught Uckfield’s glance, which said this was a waste of time, and he agreed. Horton politely thanked her for her help, wondering if she’d sense his sarcasm, but all he saw was relief in her bloodshot eyes. At the door he asked her if she had keys to her husband’s apartment.

‘Why would I want them?’ she answered, incredulous.

Horton expressed his sincere condolences at her loss despite the fact they were no longer married, which seemed to cause her no embarrassment. He told her that they’d liaise closely with her daughter.

‘Then she can tell me
if
you ever catch who killed Colin.’ And with that the door closed on them.

Horton climbed into the car, noticing a twitch of net curtain opposite.

Uckfield said, ‘That was Trueman on the phone. The landlord says he’s not been in Yately’s apartment and the second set of keys hasn’t left his office.’

So they could rule out the landlord and daughter.

Uckfield said, ‘Yately was well shot of her. Think she killed him?’

‘Why?’

‘Maybe she got fed up with him pestering her to take him back.’

‘
If
you believe that. It’s not much of a motive though.’

‘It could be enough for a new boyfriend.’

Horton considered that. ‘I think she was telling the truth when she said she didn’t have a key to his apartment but we should still check her out, chat to the staff at the pub where she works, and ask the neighbours if there’s a new man on the horizon.’

‘No need, looks as though he’s just arrived.’

A saloon car passed them and pulled up outside her house. Horton watched a man in his mid forties climb out. He was wearing a dark overcoat but as he turned on the doorstep Horton noticed the smart suit beneath it and the slightly furtive expression on his round face before he stepped inside. Something nudged at Horton’s memory, and with a shock he realized it was connected with his mother. What was it about the man he’d just seen that had triggered it? His size, his appearance? His manner? Or all three.

‘Married,’ declared Uckfield. ‘God knows what he sees in her.’

Was that it, Horton thought, as Uckfield turned the car back towards Ventnor. Had married men come calling on his mother? Not in the flat they hadn’t, except for one man, and Horton had discovered who he was, and he was now dead. But they’d lived in a little terraced house before they’d moved to the council flat and he remembered it clearly, sitting in a row of similar houses in a crowded area of Portsmouth. There
had
been men, and he now recalled raised voices on one occasion, and he’d been sent out to play. How old had he been? Seven or eight? Younger? He couldn’t say. He needed to check where they had lived. The census information would give him that.

‘I’ll ring in the car registration number,’ he said, reaching for his phone. Trueman would trace the owner and they’d ask him whether or not he knew Colin Yately and when he’d last seen him. He hadn’t looked as though he’d kill Yately out of jealousy or for money, but who could tell?

After he hung up, he told Uckfield what Margaret Yately had said about the dress.

‘Trueman’s sending it over to the university as soon as the lab has finished with it, which should be tomorrow. What was that stuff about caves and chines I heard you ask her?’

‘Just something I read in those notes.’

Uckfield’s phone rang. Horton leant over and put the call on speaker. It was Sergeant Norris and he sounded excited. ‘We’ve got a witness who saw a man entering and leaving Yately’s flat early this morning at about nine thirty-five. We’ve got a good description of him, about five-eleven, slim, grey-haired, in his early sixties, and what’s more we’ve got a name. The neighbour got the car registration and we’ve traced it to an Arthur Lisle. He lives in Bonchurch. He was carrying a briefcase.’

Uckfield bellowed, ‘Do nothing. We’ll be there in ten minutes.’

Ambitious, thought Horton, though by the way Uckfield was driving maybe not.

EIGHT

N
orris dashed through the rain and slid his fat backside into the rear of Uckfield’s BMW, his trousers squeaking on the leather upholstery, his balding round florid face glistening from the rain and exertion. They were parked in a winding, tree-lined road of elegant Victorian terraced houses. The heavy rain and trees made it prematurely dark prompting lights to shine from several of the rooms, allowing a glimpse inside of subdued suburban life, but there was no light at Lisle’s house.

‘He’s clean, no previous,’ panted Norris. ‘He doesn’t seem to be in and his car isn’t here, although he could keep it in a garage somewhere. It’s a 1961 Morris Minor convertible, burgundy with a cream hood and cream leather interior. The man who saw Lisle – Grant Millbeck – lives in flat six, he was just off to work when he saw this man entering—’

‘With a key?’ Horton interjected.

‘Well he didn’t ring the front doorbell so he must have had one,’ Norris tossed caustically at Horton, before turning his attention back to Uckfield. ‘Then Millbeck saw the same man leaving and he was carrying a briefcase.’

‘Why did Millbeck hang around waiting for Lisle to come out?’ asked Horton suspiciously.

‘He didn’t. He’d forgotten his lunch box and went back to his apartment to collect it. He was just locking up when Lisle came down the stairs from apartment seven. Millbeck claims that Lisle didn’t seem or look nervous. He smiled and said “good morning”. Millbeck’s seen the Morris at the apartment block a couple of times, and admired it, and he remembered the registration number because it was unusual, MOG 61, so he wasn’t worried about Lisle being there.’

Horton addressed Uckfield, ‘Lisle could be the friend Yately gave his keys to. He probably removed the notes from the apartment with Yately’s prior permission. He doesn’t sound like our killer.’

‘You never can tell,’ Uckfield said optimistically, adding to Norris, ‘Call up the nearest patrol car.’

‘Just arriving, sir.’

Horton swivelled in his seat to see the police vehicle pulling in behind them. There were no blue lights or sirens but he fancied more curtains would be twitched in Grove Way.

Climbing out, Uckfield said, ‘We’ll start by being polite and knock.’

Horton obliged, rapping loudly on the front door and then pressing and keeping his finger on the bell to the right of it, but all was silent. He stooped down and peered through the letterbox. ‘No signs of life,’ he said straightening up. Addressing Norris he asked, ‘Is there a rear entrance?’

‘No.’

That made things easier. Uckfield stepped back and nodded at the uniformed officer with the ramrod. Looking at the rather flimsy front door Horton didn’t think it would take much to break it in and he was right. A couple of minutes later he was stepping inside the hall straining his ears for sound. Only the solemn ticking of a clock coming from the room to his left greeted him. Arthur Lisle clearly wasn’t here or if he was he was dead or unconscious, and there was no reason why he should be either of the latter. But it was the excuse Uckfield would give for entering the house without permission and without a search warrant.

Swiftly Horton took in the worn pale-blue carpet that looked as though it had once been of good quality, the wooden balustrade, picture rails and architrave ceiling, before turning to see that a small audience was gathering at the front of the house in the pouring rain. He instructed the uniformed officers to get what information they could on Lisle and his movements, while Uckfield crossed to a telephone on a walnut table under the stairs and with latex-covered fingers lifted the receiver. ‘No answer machine,’ he said, punching in the number to get the last call. ‘Number withheld.’ He nodded Norris upstairs. To Horton he said, ‘I’ll take the kitchen, you do the lounge.’

Horton stepped inside the room on his left. Everything looked in place. It was neat and tidy if a little outdated and worn. There was a television in the corner by the bay window and a hi-fi system opposite it, both several years old. On the mantelpiece was the clock, which Horton had heard on first entering the house, and alongside it several family photographs and a picture of Lisle beside the Morris Minor which Norris had described to them. It looked in good condition and wouldn’t be difficult to spot; classic cars like it were few and far between these days.

Horton studied the photographs. Arthur Lisle looked to be a happily married family man, lean and tall with brown hair turning to grey as the photographs showed him through the passage of the years. In every one he was smiling. In some he was accompanied by young children and a pretty, dark-haired woman. And he was also with the same woman dressed in walking clothes against the backdrop of some mountains, which, to Horton, looked like the Brecon Beacons in Wales. Other photographs were of two couples in their thirties accompanied by babies and toddlers. The Lisle family through the ages, he guessed. Not only did Arthur Lisle not sound like their killer, he didn’t look like one either, although Horton knew that was a very dangerous and foolish assumption for a police officer to make. Yately had seemed an ordinary man but had ended up being brutally murdered. Why?

He reconsidered the third theory he’d expressed to Uckfield, that the dress found on Yately could have belonged to a woman Yately had been involved with. Was that woman connected with Arthur Lisle, Horton wondered, studying the photograph of the dark-haired woman? Had Lisle entered Yately’s flat and taken those notes because they contained a reference to it? But if Lisle had killed Yately and taken the keys off him, why leave the photograph of Hannah Yately behind and why wait until now to visit Yately’s apartment when he could have done so any time since Thursday? And why chance being spotted and recognized? No, Lisle had to be a friend and his visit to Yately’s flat innocent.

He wondered where the Lisle family were now, especially Mrs Lisle. There was no evidence of her in this room, no female magazines, no sewing or knitting, but maybe Lisle liked it that way. Perhaps he was a tyrant, despite the photographs. Some of the vilest bullies Horton had known had looked and behaved to the outside world like pillars of virtue.

He stepped along the hall and into a middle room. He could hear Uckfield opening and closing doors and drawers in the kitchen and Norris’s heavy footsteps overhead. No one had shouted out to say they’d found either Mrs Lisle or her husband, so where were they? wondered Horton, surveying the old-fashioned dining room, which looked as though its current use was as an office. Would they return horrified and angry to find the police in their house?

Uckfield joined him. ‘There’s food in the cupboards and fridge so he wasn’t planning on leaving.’

Horton’s eyes ran over the mahogany table and chairs in the centre of the room, the sideboard opposite the fireplace, the books scattered on the table and on the bookshelves either side of the hearth, before coming back to the table. ‘Where’s the computer?’ He pointed to a cable and charger that led to an electric socket.

‘Perhaps he’s taken it to night classes or is with friends,’ suggested Uckfield.

Horton crossed the room and picked up one of the books. It was on local history and some of the others were on ships, including naval, merchant and passenger. Clearly Lisle and Yately shared the same interests. He glanced out of the narrow window to his right. It was still raining heavily.

‘There’s a shed at the bottom of the garden,’ he said as Norris entered.

‘No sign that Lisle was intending to leave. His passport’s here.’ Norris handed it to Uckfield. Horton looked over the Super’s shoulder. It was the same man as in the photographs on the mantelpiece. There were a few stamps in it to show that Lisle had travelled abroad but nothing for the last six years.