Fatal Catch

by Pauline Rowson

  His thoughts veered to the well-built, athletic man in his mid-sixties who had left this picture stuffed behind the cushion on his boat in June. He’d introduced himself to Horton as Edward Ballard, except Ballard didn’t exist, certainly not on any databases Horton had checked. It was an alias. Ballard had told Horton he was sailing to Guernsey but, according to Inspector John Guilbert of the States of Guernsey police, a good friend of Horton’s, Ballard had never arrived, or at least not in any of the official marinas. He could have moored up at a private house but finding which one would take police resources, which meant making it an official enquiry and Horton hadn’t wanted that. He’d since discovered that Eileen Litchfield, his foster mother, had come from Guernsey. So too did a lot of people but Horton was convinced that Ballard had rescued him from the horror of those children’s homes and placed him with Bernard and Eileen Litchfield when he was fourteen. And that it was Ballard he’d seen hand his foster father a tin which Bernard had given to him containing his birth certificate, with no mention of who his father was, and a photograph of Jennifer. Both had been destroyed in that fire on his previous boat.

  Guilbert had made some enquiries about Eileen and mentally Horton replayed the telephone conversation that had taken place between them last Wednesday.

  ‘Eileen Litchfield, née Ducale, was a twin,’ Guilbert had relayed.

  And that had been a complete shock to Horton. She’d never mentioned that, or any other living relative even when she had been dying of cancer, and none had attended the funeral, only a handful of neighbours, because he’d had no list of names or contacts to invite. Eileen had been a very private person.

  Horton’s interest had deepened as Guilbert had continued with his unofficial report.

  ‘She and her brother, Andrew, were born in 1942 on Guernsey and both left the island in 1961. Eileen to join the Civil Service in London and Andrew to study at Cambridge.’

  Lord Eames had been at Cambridge between 1964 and 1967. Had their paths crossed?

  Horton had asked Guilbert what Andrew Ducale had studied but Guilbert didn’t know. He’d continued, ‘Their father, William, was a police officer and remained one throughout the German occupation. He died in 1967 and their mother, Florence, died in 1958. There’s an aged aunt living on the island, Violet Ducale, sister of the twins’ father.’

  Horton had asked Guilbert to find out if the aunt had any photographs of the twins. He was very keen to see pictures of Andrew Ducale, feeling certain that he’d recognize him if it was the man who had called himself Edward Ballard. He’d told Guilbert it was a personal matter and Guilbert had accepted that, as Horton knew he would. Horton trusted him as much as he trusted Cantelli, which was completely. He hadn’t had the opportunity to dig into Andrew Ducale’s background. Maybe soon he would. He was due a few days off and if he wasn’t needed to help find Alfie Wright and the owner of the severed hand, which again he thought might be one and the same, then he’d take some leave.

  He stuffed the photograph back in his wallet wondering what to do about Dr Carolyn Grantham. If he stuck to his decision not to co-operate with her research what would she do? Respect it or find some other reason to contact him? The answer depended on how genuine she was and perhaps how desperate she, or the person she reported to, was to know just how much he’d discovered about his mother’s disappearance. Maybe tomorrow he’d have the answer.

  THREE

  Thursday

  ‘Any news of Alfie Wright?’ Horton asked Sergeant Warren the next morning. He’d risen early and despite the fine layer of snow had gone for a run along the promenade to clear his head after a restless troubled night of lustful dreams of Carolyn Grantham, who alarmingly became Jennifer, who in turn became Alfie Wright and in amongst all three was the sweating florid face of Clive Westerbrook and the severed hand that had taken on a life of its own. He blamed Cantelli for the latter. He’d called at Westerbrook’s flat before heading for the station. There had been no answer when he’d rang the bell and he’d been reluctant to trouble the neighbours. He didn’t want to alarm them unnecessarily. Westerbrook could have decided to stay with a friend. But if so then why wasn’t he answering his mobile?

  Warren said, ‘Not unless Alfie’s using an alias and has had a face transplant, which would save us from looking at his ugly mug again.’

  Horton asked if Clive Westerbrook had been in to make his statement. And as he expected was told he hadn’t.

  Grabbing a coffee on his way to his office, Horton rang through to the Accident and Emergency department at the hospital and enquired if Clive Westerbrook had been admitted. The answer was no, and no unidentified males had been either. Next he called up the vehicle licensing database and keyed in Westerbrook’s name. He obtained the registration number of his car and rang it through to Fareham police station with a request that an officer visit the marina car park to see if the vehicle was there but to do nothing except report back. He was told it might be a while before they could get someone over there, resources were tied up dealing with a multiple accident on the motorway. Horton then rang through to Warren and asked him to send a uniformed officer round to Spring Court to check if the vehicle was parked anywhere in the vicinity. Horton couldn’t remember seeing it out front but it could be in a nearby street.

  Putting his concerns about Westerbrook on hold, Horton focused on Dr Grantham. He called up the Missing Persons database and found the details on Brenda Myers. It was as she had said, but he hadn’t doubted that part of her story. Brenda Myers had been living in Andover in the family home with her mother, sister and two brothers. She’d left for where she worked, a shoe shop in the centre of the town, on Saturday morning and had never arrived. She had been twenty-three when she had disappeared and had no boyfriend. Horton didn’t call up the full report, there was no connection between Brenda and Jennifer’s disappearance apart from the fact that Dr Grantham claimed to be interested in both for her research. If her research was fake, a cover designed to find out from him what he knew about Jennifer’s disappearance, then whoever had sent her would have made sure that it would check out. And that meant the university would also have been primed with all the correct details.

  He turned his attention to the reports of crimes that had come in overnight. It had been remarkably quiet, the snow always kept the villains at home. And there had been no further petrol station raids. His phone rang and from the display he could see it was Bliss.

  ‘Your team, in the incident suite, immediately, Inspector,’ she commanded with her usual curtness and rang off. She’d never been one for small talk, and Horton couldn’t recall her ever having uttered the words ‘good morning’, ‘well done’ or ‘thank you’ but then she wasn’t alone in that respect. Both Uckfield and ACC Dean’s vocabulary seemed to be sadly lacking those phrases. He wondered if the summons meant that further body parts had been found, except he’d seen nothing in the reports to say they had been and Sergeant Warren hadn’t mentioned it. He rose and entered CID as Cantelli arrived carrying the local newspaper. ‘The witch in the wardrobe requests our pleasure in the incident suite. She didn’t say why.’

  ‘It could be in connection with this.’ Cantelli handed Horton the newspaper.

  Horton winced at the headline, ‘Police allow violent criminal to abscond’. Thanks, Leanne, though to be fair she wouldn’t have penned the headline. But anyone reading this would think they’d either failed to arrest Wright or had simply patted him on the head and let him go. Uckfield was going to be very pissed off about this and the ACC would give, or might already have given, the Super a bollocking. The full article was on page three. Horton turned to it and quickly read it. Uckfield had been right. Leanne Payne had gone to town on Alfie Wright absconding. There was a photograph of his lean-featured face, looking slightly cocky, taken after he had appeared in court and been granted conditional bail, along with details of the vicious assault he’d committed on David Jewson. The article implied that the police had let him escape their clutches, s
he was wrong on that score but she was correct in describing Alfie Wright as a dangerous man. He had a quick temper which accel-erated to hyper speed when fuelled by alcohol.

  She’d also backed up her article by listing other criminals who had evaded the law including two men from the Portsmouth area: Wayne Naughton who had been awaiting trial for conspiracy to supply cocaine and Gordon Penlee, a phoney art dealer granted unconditional bail on 26 November and due to appear before Portsmouth Magistrates on Wednesday 5 December, only he’d vanished as had Naughton. Horton’s feelings echoed Uckfield’s fury. It beggared belief that a criminal could be convicted then allowed to roam free before being sentenced. Most were remanded when committing a serious crime but that was dependent on the barristers’ ability and the magistrate or judge sitting at the time. And Alfie had been very lucky in the judge who had sat at his hearing, Nigel Appley, and the barrister who had defended him, Douglas Pylam. Horton didn’t know how Tim Shearer had squared up against them, he hadn’t been in court, maybe Shearer had been unlucky, or had had an off day. He’d certainly not been as sharp as Pylam.

  Alongside the list of the local men who had disappeared was a list of six other wanted criminals, most of them on drugs related offences, and one who had been tried at the Royal Courts of Justice, in the Strand, London for bankruptcy but was wanted for fraud on a massive scale, Jesse Stanhope, whose relatives lived in Portsmouth, all of whom categorically denied any knowledge of where he was or any part in his disappearing act. Horton wouldn’t be surprised if this made the national media, and tomorrow Leanne might have another big story to add to her CV, that of the severed hand, which could belong to Alfie Wright.

  ‘Not good,’ Horton said, handing the paper back to Cantelli and heading into the corridor. ‘Where’s Walters?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  ‘We’ll collect him on our way.’

  Walters looked bereft at being parted from his fried breakfast, which he’d only just started. Horton told him his arteries would probably be relieved at the reprieve.

  Bliss greeted them with her usual scowl and glanced pointedly at her watch as they entered the crowded incident suite. What had she expected? For them to have been tele-transported? Clearly, her ‘immediately’ was not the same as his but then they disagreed on almost everything, especially the manner of catching criminals. Bliss was strictly a ‘by the book’ copper, and while Horton recognized they were operating in a tough climate that had to bear rigid scrutiny, much of the heaps of paperwork they were forced to deal with he considered a waste of time. Uckfield, legs akimbo, stood at the head of the room by the crime board, beside him was the muscle-bound, short-necked and cropped-haired DI Dennings. The room fell silent, as, with one deepening glare, Uckfield called it to order.

  ‘The fingerprints on the severed hand are not Alfie Wright’s,’ he announced.

  Horton thought there was a hint of disappointment or perhaps it was frustration in Uckfield’s voice.

  ‘But we do have a match.’

  Horton’s pulse quickened.

  ‘They’re Graham Langham’s.’

  ‘Langham!’ Horton repeated, surprised. ‘Are you sure?’

  Bliss glared at Horton for daring to question a senior officer. She didn’t know Langham, not having worked the patch, otherwise she would have understood his surprise. She’d also have understood Cantelli’s and Walters’ shocked expression, and Uckfield’s irritation. They were all very familiar with Graham Langham.

  ‘There’s no doubt,’ Uckfield declared. ‘Langham’s done his last job. He was a crook, and not a very good one, spent more time in prison than out of it, petty theft was his speciality, not serious crime, so why would someone hack off his hand?’

  ‘Perhaps he helped himself to something he shouldn’t have done and the owner took revenge,’ Dennings suggested.

  Horton thought of what he and Cantelli had discussed about the Bible but that didn’t fit because Cantelli had said the hacking off of the right hand had something to do with masturbation or adultery, and Horton couldn’t see any woman wanting to have sex with the scrawny weed that Langham had been, except his wife Moira. Someone would have to break the news to her. But of course the person who had committed such an atrocity might not know his Bible, probably didn’t.

  Cantelli said, ‘He never took anything very valuable. His usual MO was quick in and out: usually garages, garden sheds, anything that looked an easy target. He’d take what he could, no matter what it was.’

  Walters chipped in. ‘Perhaps the householder Langham stole from chopped off Langham’s hand in self-defence, thinking he was going to be attacked, then seeing what he’d done he got scared. He had to get rid of the body so he chopped it up, stuffed the body parts in kitchen containers and disposed of it as best he could by chucking it in the sea when he went out along the beach or in a boat.’

  Dennings took it up. ‘And if he did it piecemeal perhaps he thought no one would notice.’

  Walters continued, ‘He could even have left the containers on the shore, while no one was looking. Sort of taken them with him pretending they contained his sandwiches, and then acted absentmindedly as though he’d forgotten it.’

  ‘Must be pretty big sandwiches,’ quipped Uckfield.

  Walters shrugged. ‘Depends on how small you can cut up a body. Maybe he cut it into tiny bits.’

  Uckfield eyed him sceptically. ‘Ask Dr Clayton, she’ll know all about corpse dismemberment.’ There was a moment’s silence while everybody contemplated the grisly thought.

  Cantelli broke it. ‘Perhaps Langham got into a fight and someone hacked his hand off with a knife.’

  Horton answered, ‘But why not just leave it by the body, or ditch it without putting it in a container?’

  Uckfield crisply continued. ‘OK so what else do we know about Langham?’

  He’d made no mention of the newspaper article but Horton knew he had seen it. There was a copy on Trueman’s desk.

  Cantelli answered. ‘Married to Moira, a former prostitute and drug addict. Three kids the last I heard, could be more by now but if there are they’re not Langham’s, he got sent down for burglary for four years.’

  Trueman looked up. ‘He served just under three in Winchester Prison. He was released two months ago.’

  Horton said, ‘He didn’t live long to enjoy his new-found freedom. It could be the act of a villain who was banged up with him intent on revenge who took it as soon as he was out. Perhaps Langham put his nose out of joint while inside.’

  Trueman said he’d checked who else had been released in the last two months and if Langham had antagonized anyone while inside.

  ‘Could be a long list,’ muttered Cantelli.

  Horton addressed Dennings. ‘Did Langham know Alfie Wright?’

  ‘Not that we know of.’

  ‘Then bloody well check,’ roared Uckfield.

  A fraught silence followed Uckfield’s outburst. It was as though everyone was holding their breath. Dennings’ lips tightened as he threw Horton a look that would have felled ten sword-wielding Samurai in seconds.

  Horton said, ‘Perhaps Graham had pissed Alfie off and he killed him and has gone on the run. Alfie’s vicious enough to have done it, although I can’t see him putting the hand in a container and then throwing it in the sea, unless he did it while on board a boat, owned by someone helping him to make his escape, but why would Alfie kill Langham?’

  Bliss said, ‘They could have served time together.’

  Trueman said he’d check that.

  Horton added, ‘I suppose Graham Langham could have been in the Jolly Sailor when Wright attacked David Jewson. Langham saw what happened and threatened to tell unless Wright paid up. Wright’s not having that and kills him.’

  Dennings quickly addressed Uckfield, ‘I’ll get some officers down to the Jolly Sailor asking if they remember seeing Langham there on the night Jewson was attacked. They can show his picture around. And we’ll reinterview members of the J
ewson family.’

  Horton asked if they had anything further on the last sighting of Alfie Wright.

  Dennings curtly replied, ‘We’ve placed him in The Trafalgar Arms in Fratton Road on Saturday morning. But we can’t find anyone who knows what time he left. The landlord didn’t see him go, said it was too busy because of the football match that afternoon. No one saw him return to his flat.’

  ‘Did Dr Clayton provide any more information about the hand?’ Horton asked.

  Trueman answered. ‘She got held up in London. She’s looking at it this morning.’

  Horton said, ‘If it’s two to three days old, as the mortician claimed, then why didn’t Moira report him missing?’

  ‘Well, you can ask her,’ said Uckfield. ‘Take Cantelli with you for protection. If I remember rightly Moira’s bite is certainly worse than her bark and unless she’s cut her fingernails you could end up scarred for life.’

  Cantelli had nicked Graham Langham more times than anyone.

  ‘Perhaps she’s relieved he’s gone,’ Bliss said.

  Maybe, thought Horton. ‘I could talk to Ewan Stringer, he might know if Alfie had ever come across Langham.’

  Uckfield nodded assent. He scratched his crotch and sniffed loudly before continuing. ‘No doubt some of you have seen the local rag, and if you haven’t then you soon will or someone will delight in pointing it out to you. Finding that scum bag Wright is our priority.’

  Not who killed Langham then, thought Horton, but didn’t say. Maybe they were one and the same, anyway.