Deadly Waters (9 page)

Cantelli looked blankly at him. Horton explained. ‘Small boats have to enter Portsmouth Harbour through the small boat channel, which is on the opposite side to Portsmouth, otherwise they risk being mowed down by one of the big continental ferries, a navy ship or cargo vessel. To get into Town Camber they have to cross the main channel when they are north of Ballast Beacon and permission has to be granted by the Queen’s harbour master. The same goes if they’re leaving Town Camber. So if Langley’s body was taken from here, there’s a chance that we’ll know about it.’

‘What if she was taken out on a fishing boat?’

‘The same applies. They can leave the harbour close inshore on the Portsmouth side but they still have to request permission to proceed, and give their intended route and licence number. We also need to ask the fishermen if they saw anything suspicious last night or any boat leaving the Town Camber.

Get someone working on that.’ He paused and frowned.

Rubbing a hand across his eyes, he said, ‘There’s something we’re missing, but I’m buggered if I can see it.’

‘Perhaps it will come to us after we’ve eaten,’ Cantelli said hopefully and his stomach rumbled loudly, reinforcing his point.

Horton capitulated. He could feel his own stomach knocking against his ribs. And with a backward glance at the small harbour, he left with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his gut, which he knew was something more than just hunger.

Friday: 2 p.m.

‘What about the fisherman who called the harbour master?’

Uckfield asked, tapping his pen impatiently on his desk and eyeing Horton intently, as if trying to mesmerize him into saying, ‘Yes he’s our killer!’

‘He was collecting some fishing nets from the mulberry.

Didn’t want to get involved. So he waited until he was out in the Solent before reporting it.’

‘And you believe he’s got nothing to do with this?’

‘Yes.’

Uckfield gave a sarcastic snort, tossed his pen aside and threw himself back in his leather chair, which groaned under the impact.

Horton hadn’t been invited to take a seat in Uckfield’s spacious new office, which was on the far side of the incident suite. Horton guessed that Uckfield was making him stand deliberately as a way of reinforcing the gap in rank between them.

Horton had half a mind to slump casually in the chair this side of the big man’s desk, cross his legs and act as he had always done with Uckfield to see what reaction he got. He didn’t think Steve had the balls to demand he leap to attention when being addressed by a senior officer but the time for playing games would come later. Maybe once he’d solved this case and rubbed Uckfield’s nose in it.

Horton said, ‘I’ve put an officer at the school and Sergeant Trueman is organizing a team to take statements from the staff. Edney’s asked them to stay on after school. A car will take him back there after he’s formally identified the body.’

He glanced at his watch. He had about three-quarters of an hour before he needed to be at the mortuary.

‘Well, let’s hope it’s her, otherwise we’re all up shit creek without a paddle, and you and Cantelli won’t even have a boat,’ snarled Uckfield.

Dismissed, Horton returned to the incident room and the sandwiches, which Cantelli had fetched from the canteen. He crossed to the coffee machine and pressed the button for strong and black.

‘Did you get a copy of the Lear poem?’ he asked, managing to grab a vacant chair in the heaving incident room and squeeze it alongside Cantelli.

‘Yes. There are three verses,’ Cantelli answered through a mouthful of bacon sandwich.

Horton peeled back the bread of his own and stared at the ham, cheese and salad before conveying it to his mouth.

Peering over Cantelli’s shoulder he began to read:

‘The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat—’

Cantelli interrupted, ‘We’re checking for pea-green boats in marinas and in the harbour.’

‘There are hundreds of them.
My
boat is pea-green.’ Horton took out his notebook and extracted the photograph he’d taken from Jessica Langley’s office. ‘I can’t see if the boat she’s on is pea-green or its name, more’s the pity, but by the look of the helm behind her I would say it’s a large, modern yacht.

And they don’t come cheap.’

‘Head teachers aren’t on a bad screw and Langley had no dependents.’

Cantelli was right. Horton took up the poem, reading aloud again:

‘They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows.’

Cantelli, finishing his sandwich and wiping his hands with his handkerchief, said, ‘Is there such a thing as a Bong-tree?’

‘I doubt it. Look it up on the Internet; it seems to have the answer to most things.’ Except the real questions in life, thought Horton, like who killed Jessica Langley?

‘It could be a place: the name of a bar, restaurant or café where Langley and her lover met?’

‘You don’t want to give up on this lover theory, do you, Barney?’

‘I can feel it in my Italian blood.’

‘Well, I wish you could feel who our owl is. OK, get someone checking.’ Horton read:

‘And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose.’

Cantelli interjected, ‘Our athletic youth could have a ring in his nose. You know how kids are into body piercing, these days.’

That was possible, Horton thought, though he couldn’t remember seeing him sporting one. Still, he’d only caught a glimpse of the youth under the orange glow of a streetlight and all he could recall was the youth’s hollowed face. Aloud he read:

‘And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon.’

He sat back and took a long pull at his coffee, hoping it would keep him awake. Cantelli didn’t look too clever either.

His eyes were sinking deeper into dark hollows.

Horton said, ‘There wasn’t a moon last night but the mulberry is on Sinah Sands. Does this MO sound like anything you’ve come across before, Barney?’

Cantelli rubbed a hand across his eyes. ‘Not that I can recall.’

‘Check it out and also check out Johnson’s known associates. See who has been convicted or suspected of house robberies involving antiques or art. Have a word with the specialist investigations unit. They might come up with a couple of names.’

Horton finished the remains of his sandwich and crossed to the large, freely perspiring man in the far corner of the incident room. ‘Anything from Langley’s bank statements yet, Walters?’

‘There’s a fair bit of money in her bank and building society accounts. That’s as far as I’ve got.’

‘Is there any evidence she owns a boat? Payments to a marina company, the harbour master or a marine mortgage,’

Horton explained to Walters’ blank stare.

‘Not that I can see, just the usual bills.’

‘Telephone records?’

‘I’ve given them to Peters.’ Walters jerked his head in the direction of a young officer, with an intense expression, and auburn hair, who didn’t look much older than nineteen. ‘You’d have thought I’d handed him the crown jewels.’

‘That’s what I like, Walters, enthusiasm. See if some of it can rub off on you.’

He left Walters grumbling, which was nothing new, splashed his face with cold water and found Somerfield in the CID

office huddled over a desk reading through some papers.

‘Johnson claims this was his first antiques robbery,’ Kate Somerfield said, as Horton perched on the edge of the desk opposite her.

‘You believe him?’

‘No.’

‘Has he said anything worth listening to?’ Horton asked in exasperation.

Somerfield’s answer was in her expression. ‘There were no fingerprints on the holdall or on the boat that matched Johnson’s. I guess he kept his gloves on. There are other fingerprints on the boat. I’ll see if I can get a match, though I expect they’re the owner’s. He’s a Mr James Martin. He telephoned in half an hour ago to report that his house had been broken into, and I asked him if he had a boat.’

Horton raised his eyebrows. This just wasn’t Mickey Johnson’s style. So who was pulling his strings? It had to be someone who knew that Mr Martin kept a boat at Town Camber; a fellow boat owner or a neighbour? Perhaps someone who worked with Martin?

‘What does this James Martin do for a living?’

‘He’s retired.’

Bang went that theory, though there were still the other two to explore. ‘Do any of the other robbery victims own boats?’

‘It’s not in the reports. I’ll check.’

‘If they do find out where they keep them.’ It was a possible lead.

‘Martin and his wife have only just got back from London,’

Somerfield continued, ‘They went to a show last night and stayed up in town. The fingerprint bureau are sending someone to Martin’s house. I’m just on my way there to interview him.’

Horton let her go, with instructions to keep him informed.

Then he grabbed his helmet and his leather jacket from his office and headed for the mortuary where he found Edney pacing the corridor. He was pale and anxious. Horton didn’t blame him for that.

‘Can we get this over with, Inspector? I’ve a meeting to attend,’ Edney said tetchily.

Horton ignored this. ‘I must warn you that you may find this disturbing. She’d been out in the sea air for some time.’

Edney gulped. ‘The sea? But I thought she’d been killed in her apartment.’

Horton hadn’t said and Edney had assumed. He could see Edney’s mind racing with this new information.

‘Surely she couldn’t have gone sailing last night after . . .

after work?’ Edney continued.

Horton was convinced he had been about to say something else but had quickly substituted the word ‘work.’ Why? Did Edney know her movements?

‘You know she sails?’

Edney nodded. ‘She talked about it occasionally.’

‘Does she have a boat?’

‘I don’t know.’ Then he asked hesitantly. ‘Where was she found, Inspector?’

Horton didn’t see any reason not to tell him, as it would soon be made public knowledge. ‘On the mulberry in Langstone Harbour.’

Edney’s face registered surprise. ‘My God!’ he breathed.

‘Are you ready, sir?’

Edney set his shoulders and nodded.

Tom, the mortuary attendant, respectably clad in a white coat instead of the mortuary garb and minus the whistling rendition of a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, pushed back the door to a small room, which was used for identification purposes, and Horton gently ushered in Edney.

The thin man tensed, drawing a sharp breath. Tom pulled back the sheet covering the recumbent corpse just far enough to ensure that Edney didn’t see the gaping scars where he’d inserted the knife in the forehead and the chest. Horton watched Edney’s eyes flick to the dead woman. The blood drained from his face. His body swayed, and Horton put his hands out instinctively to catch him, but at the last minute Edney pulled himself together.

‘That’s her. It’s Jessica Langley,’ he said faintly.

Outside, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his narrow forehead. He was still trembling.

‘Would you like to sit down for a while? Can I get you a drink?’ Horton volunteered.

Edney shook his head. ‘No. I must get back. I have asked all the staff, with no exceptions, to be in the staff room.’ His voice faltered and he fell heavily on to the seat. Horton nodded at Tom who fetched a plastic beaker of water.

Edney grasped it with both hands and drank it down in one go. After a moment he said, ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, you must think me very weak. I couldn’t quite believe she was dead until I saw . . . How did she die?’

‘We’re still trying to establish that. We’d appreciate all the co-operation you can give us, Mr Edney.’

‘Of course.’

‘I’d like to be present when you tell the staff.’

Edney’s head came up and Horton could see some of the old hostility and suspicion re-emerging. ‘You can’t think that any of us could be involved in murder
?
’ he cried.

‘We need to find out all we can about Ms Langley’s personal and professional life in order to find her killer.’

Edney lost what little colour he had regained.

‘I understand that Ms Langley only joined the school at Easter,’ Horton continued. ‘Was her appointment a popular one?’

‘The board of governors and the local education authority thought so.’

Horton picked up on a slight nuance of tone. ‘But you didn’t.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Edney replied, stiffly.

No, you didn’t have to, Horton thought, it’s written all over your face and embedded in your voice and attitude. Horton waited. His patience was rewarded when Edney eventually said, ‘I admit I didn’t like her.’

Horton sat down beside him. ‘Why not?’

Edney sucked in his breath, pondered a moment, and then exhaled. Clearly his feelings had been pent up inside him for months and Horton’s question unleashed a torrent of vitriol.

‘She was a callous, vindictive, evil woman.’

‘To anyone in particular?’ Horton asked, hiding his surprise at the vehemence of Edney’s feelings.

‘No.’

Horton didn’t believe him. He was protecting someone.

Maybe it was Edney himself who had been on the end of Langley’s sharp tongue.

‘How did
you
get on with her?’

‘She needed me,’ Edney replied evasively and with bitterness. ‘She was an impatient woman. She couldn’t be bothered with drawing up the timetable, or seeing to all the staff problems, and the day-to-day running of the school. That is what I am good at.’

Horton recollected the state of Langley’s office and the pile of unanswered e-mail printouts and memos spilling from her in-tray.

Edney continued, ‘She was an ideas person and though some of her ideas were good, many of them simply caused more problems than they solved, which of course I then had to deal with. I was for ever running round smoothing over things and dealing with the people she upset. ’

‘And the board wanted an ideas person.’

‘Apparently so,’ he answered with disparagement.

‘Did you apply for the position?’