A Killing Coast (25 page)

Horton could see that Uckfield was not going to give up on his theory. Trueman confirmed that forensics had also said the dress had been barely worn, but they could get little else from it except salt water, sand and grit. They were still analysing Hazleton’s clothes. It was agreed that tomorrow Trueman would contact the V&A and Horton would accompany Oliver Vernon around Hazleton’s house. Trueman would also continue the checks on Victor Hazleton and Colin Yately. And Dennings’ team in the temporary incident suite at Ventnor would start checking Harold Jenkins and the other names in the archive file, though Uckfield left no doubt he thought it a waste of time. Horton could see the investigation was set to be a long haul and was clearly going to drag on beyond Saturday unless another body turned up, such as Arthur Lisle’s.

Cantelli went home. Walters had already left and there was no sign of Bliss. A disgruntled Uckfield prowled the major incident suite like a dyspeptic lion and Horton slipped back to his office while Uckfield took a call from Dennings. There Horton settled in front of his computer ignoring his paperwork and called up missing persons files for 1976. He had no idea what he was looking for but he started with the local area, it seemed as good a place as any, and the victims were local so perhaps the woman had been too.

There were two missing women for 1976, neither fitting the profile, none for 1977 and one for 1978, Jennifer Horton. There were also two missing men. In 1979 and 1980 there were three missing teenage girls and two boys, one aged fourteen, the other nineteen. Horton continued into 1981 and 1982 but nobody matched the profile or background that Dr Louise Adams had given him. This line of enquiry was clearly a dead end but he found himself returning to 1978. This time he checked out the profile of the two men who had gone missing the same year as his mother. One was aged forty-three, married with three children, who had worked in a factory on the Dundas Lane estate. It was known that he’d been suffering from depression. He had left for work one day and never returned. Horton spared a thought for the man’s wife and children who had lived with uncertainty for so long. The other man was single, aged thirty-one. He was a local accountant whose mother had reported him missing when he didn’t arrive home from work on 2 December 1978. It transpired that he had never arrived at work. There was no record of him having been depressed and no reason why he should disappear. Was the mother still alive? wondered Horton. How had she coped with the mystery of her missing son? Had it eaten her up over the years? He guessed so.

He stood up and stretched, again considering what Adrian Stanley had been trying to tell him. Mentally he replayed the meeting in that small hospital room and Stanley’s struggle to speak. But he still couldn’t make sense of it. Perhaps if he visited a second time Stanley might be better. That would have to wait until tomorrow. It was time to go home to the boat. There was nothing more he could do here. If the enquiries into the dress and those into the archive file led nowhere, and if Lisle didn’t turn up and there were no reported sightings of him or Yately, where did that leave them? What other avenues could they explore?

Horton stared out of the window as he considered this. There were still the missing notes. He recalled the book in Lisle’s house on the history of the Island. Had their research led them to discovering something valuable or something that someone was prepared to kill for?

He grabbed his jacket and helmet. Tomorrow he’d get the name of the author of that book on local history he’d seen on Lisle’s table and arrange to see him while he was on the Island. He had no idea where it would lead, probably nowhere, but when there was sod all else to go with it was worth a try. And tomorrow he’d hear what Oliver Vernon had to say, not only about Hazleton’s antiques and paintings but about Russell Glenn. He’d also have Glenn’s guest list, if PC Johns didn’t forget. Not that he thought any of the names would leap out at him as villains; in fact he was sure they wouldn’t. He didn’t know what he expected from seeing the list and neither was he sure what he’d gain from seeing what had been written about the little boy abandoned by his mother on a foggy and chilly November day in 1978, but in just over twelve hours he’d find out.

EIGHTEEN

Friday

‘
I
s this all there is?’ Horton asked, incredulous, looking up from the few pieces of paper in front of him at the stout, sullen-faced woman standing the other side of the scratched wooden desk. The room reminded him of an interview room at the station, except at the station the paint wasn’t peeling from the walls. She looked like a prison warder standing there in her black skirt and jacket and crisp white shirt.

‘It’s all that’s in the file,’ she snapped.

Horton recognized an evasive answer when he heard it. He hadn’t expected much but he had certainly hoped for more than just three pages stating his movements from the council flat where he’d lived with his mother to the three children’s homes and two foster homes before ending up with police constable Bernard and his wife Eileen Lichfield, who had changed the course of his troubled youth for ever and for good. Where were the notes on his behaviour, his schooling, his health? Why was nothing recorded about the times he’d run away in an attempt to find his mother, only to be brought back by the police? And why was there no record of what had happened to his mother’s belongings?

‘Then there must be another file,’ he said sharply, rising. He saw no need to put himself at a disadvantage by continuing to sit while she stood.

‘Not according to this.’ She stabbed a fat finger at the paper in her hand. ‘249/615/1 Horton Andrew.’

He stretched out a hand. She seemed reluctant to pass the paper over, but he held her hostile gaze until, with a loud exhalation, she thrust it across. She was correct, but Horton had too many years’ experience of officialdom not to know that something that ended with the number one indicated there must be other numbers after it.

‘I want a copy of this, and everything that’s in the file, and before you say that’s not possible, I know it is. I’ll wait.’

She looked about to protest before turning and flouncing out with as much indignation as she could muster. He wondered why she was so hostile. Was it just her natural demeanour or had she heard he was a copper and for some reason disliked all coppers. Perhaps she’d got a speeding ticket that morning or had had a row with her husband. Perhaps she didn’t like the look of him. Or maybe she was simply in the wrong job because he would have thought that an abandoned child, now an adult, would have drawn some sympathy.

He crossed to the grimy salt-spattered window and stared across the busy road at the modern flats to his left and then at the small boats and the iron-clad warship HMS
Warrior
in the mud of Portsmouth Harbour to his right. His eyes ached and his head felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool after another fitful night, tossing and turning over the murders of Yately and Hazleton, and when he wasn’t thinking about that and how he might have averted Hazleton’s death his thoughts had turned to contemplating what might be in his file. His early morning run along the seafront had done nothing to banish his anxiety over the latter and now that he was here it hardly seemed worth it. Curiosity, both a curse and a necessity for a police officer, had driven him. That and the fear of what he might find had made him determined to keep the appointment. It would have been easy to cancel it, to make excuses that he was too busy, particularly in light of the murder investigation, but he hated feeling afraid. He’d experienced fear too many times in his childhood and youth and knew its debilitating and humiliating effect. Because of that he’d vowed years ago to use fear as a servant not as a master. One thing was clear to him now: someone didn’t want him to see the files held on him. Why?

His mobile rang but he ignored it as he considered the question, and there was another. Not only
why
, but
who
didn’t want him having access to all the information that must have been written about him and, more crucially, written about his mother.

He gazed across the busy harbour, his mind racing. He knew that files on children in care had in the past been kept for a minimum period, which had usually been until the child reached adulthood. So why hadn’t the sullen-faced woman simply said that his files had been destroyed when he’d reached adult age? Why hadn’t the social services department told him the same, instead of granting him access? The answer came quickly: because there was nothing on record about them having been destroyed, and, if that was the case, did that mean it was just a clerical slip-up or that records about him existed somewhere? Did someone have them, but had overlooked the sheet of paper pertaining to 249/615/1 Horton Andrew? And could that someone be Detective Chief Superintendent Sawyer of the Intelligence Directorate?

The door opened and he spun round to see the stout woman holding the photocopies with a frown of disapproval on her face, but this time he saw it without the prejudice of his past and it intrigued him. Again he considered her manner and wondered what she had been told about him. He hadn’t shown his ID or announced his profession, only given his name, but someone had prejudiced her against him, why? And what the devil had she been told? Sawyer had to be behind this. But if he was, then even more important and curious was how had Sawyer known that he’d request his files? Someone had alerted them, which meant his file must be flagged, either that or his mail was being intercepted, but he thought the latter unlikely. A cold shiver crept up his spine while his heart skipped a beat. Someone had left what meagre record there was on him deliberately, just to see if one day he’d come asking for it.

Tersely, he said, ‘I’ll contact you on Monday. Meanwhile, I suggest you search your archives.’

He swept out not waiting for her reply, knowing it would only be negative. She wasn’t going to search because there was nothing to find, but his visit here, and his command, or rather the threat that he’d be back, would trigger action from someone. All he had to do was wait and see what kind of action and by whom.

He checked his messages and found one from WPC Claire Skinner who was at Arthur Lisle’s house. Horton had rung DC Marsden early that morning and asked him to find out the title and author of the book he’d seen in Lisle’s dining room. She had both and was contacting the publisher to get the author’s address. She’d call him back with it.

Horton headed for the hospital where he found Adrian Stanley asleep and alone. He sat for a while with the elderly man, willing him to wake up. His mind wandered back to their conversation in the apartment overlooking the Solent on Monday morning. There didn’t seem any hint then of what Stanley might now be trying to tell him. Puzzled, Horton let his gaze travel around the small hospital room, his eyes alighting again on the photograph beside Stanley’s bed of him receiving his gallantry medal from the Queen alongside his wife. Horton frowned. Something had nagged at him the last time he’d been here but he couldn’t pinpoint what. Now, it suddenly came to him. He hadn’t seen that picture on Monday. He would have remembered it and commented on it. So why hadn’t it been on display in Stanley’s apartment? It must have been a proud moment for Stanley. Perhaps he’d kept it in his bedroom. Horton slipped out of the room and into the corridor, where he called Robin Stanley.

‘Has your father said anything more?’ he asked when Robin came on the line.

‘I’m afraid not, Inspector.’

It was what Horton had been expecting. He said, ‘The photograph of your father receiving his gallantry medal, where did he usually keep that?’

‘It’s strange you should mention it,’ Robin replied, causing Horton’s heart to quicken. ‘It’s always kept on the mantelpiece. Dad was very proud of it but when I collected some things for Dad for the hospital I found it buried underneath some tea towels in a drawer in the kitchen.’

Horton’s mind raced as he tried to grapple with the significance of this. ‘Perhaps it was broken and your father meant to fix it?’ he suggested, knowing that the picture beside Stanley’s hospital bed didn’t look damaged to him.

‘No. It was fine.’

So why would Stanley hide it? Surely there was only one answer: because he didn’t want Horton to see it. The breath caught in his throat. He thanked Robin Stanley and quickly returned to Adrian Stanley’s hospital room. Stanley was still asleep. Horton lifted the photograph and studied it carefully. It was just an ordinary picture of a proud man and woman and yet . . . Horton recalled Adrian Stanley’s struggle to speak, surely he remembered Stanley’s eyes travelling to this picture, or was that just his overactive imagination?

With his heart thumping against his ribcage, Horton turned the frame over and lifted off the back, but with searing disappointment found nothing; no hidden notes, no comments on the rear of the photograph, not even a date. Then why had Stanley hidden it? Did it have anything to do with the armed robbery that Stanley had helped to thwart? Had one of the criminals in that robbery been involved with Jennifer or known something about her disappearance? Horton knew he’d have to check. Although eager to do so, it would have to wait because his phone rang. Seeing it was WPC Skinner he stepped out of the hospital room and answered it as he headed from the ward. She’d not only got the author’s address but had spoken to him, and Ian Williams said he’d be very pleased to talk to Inspector Horton or any member of the police if it would help with their investigation.

‘He said that Colin Yately had visited him,’ Skinner relayed excitedly.

‘When?’

‘In October, February and three weeks ago. Yately wanted some help with some research he was doing for a book.’

It was as Horton had suspected but it could still mean nothing. He told Skinner that he’d be over to talk to Mr Williams in a few hours. He hurried back to the station to find Walters and Cantelli in CID. Cantelli he could trust, and after calling him into his office he told him what had happened at the social services office and at the hospital. Cantelli looked increasingly concerned but made no comment. Horton asked him to research the armed robbery that Adrian Stanley had thwarted, which had earned him his gallantry medal, and to find out everything he could about it and the whereabouts of the perpetrators.