A Killing Coast dah-7

by Pauline Rowson

  He reached for his phone to call Cantelli but there was no signal. He headed north, skirting the shore as he picked his way along the field until he could see down into the next very small bay. Again there didn’t seem to be any hiding place. He turned and surveyed the lie of the land. To the west, directly behind where he was standing, the field led up to a dense thicket. To the north, the field continued for a distance until it gave on to a hedge and then more trees bordering the low cliff top. To the south, and the way he’d come, there was the pathway up to Hazleton’s house. Horton frowned as a thought occurred to him. Had Hazleton been involved in smuggling?

  Making his way back up to the house he tried calling Cantelli again and only managed to get a signal when he was in Hazleton’s garden.

  ‘You’re still alive then?’ he said when Cantelli answered.

  ‘Just, but I’m beginning to get claustrophobic and bleary-eyed. Not to mention faint from lack of food.’

  ‘Found anything?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when you pick me up and bring me some food.’

  Horton smiled. ‘OK.’

  Cantelli was waiting for him outside, and beside him was the large box file. ‘I called Chandler and asked his permission to take it away. Bramley had told him about Lisle requesting the file. Chandler wasn’t very pleased about it and said that none of the clients in the file was to be contacted without consulting him first. I gave him the list of names and he said he already had them on the computer file in the office. He said he’d let me know which of them were still clients. There’s too much to go through here and it needs Trueman’s expertise, not mine,’ Cantelli added after putting the box in the boot of the car and grabbing the sandwiches Horton had bought.

  Between mouthfuls he explained what he’d found. ‘The box contains a probate for Harold Jenkins who lived in Ventnor-’

  ‘Well he’s no longer one of Chandler’s clients.’

  ‘And we won’t be able to speak to him unless we engage a clairvoyant. A divorce for the Barrington-Clarkes of Newport and three property transactions: one at Fishbourne, one in Newport and the other at Brighstone, which were all handled by Arthur Lisle.’

  ‘Any of the cases involve Victor Hazleton?’

  ‘His initials are on some correspondence but they’re more plentiful on the probate matter. I’ve cross-checked the files with the index, there’s nothing missing, as far as I can tell, but, as I said, we’ll need to do a more thorough trawl through the documents and get some legal advice to see if anything could have been extracted from one of the files.’

  ‘How many people are mentioned, apart from those working for Wallingford and Chandler and those involved in the legal process?’

  ‘Nine,’ Cantelli answered, biting into his sandwich. ‘Six connected with the buying and selling of the properties; the two divorcees and Harold Jenkins, of Ventnor, the deceased probate.’

  ‘Who inherited?’

  ‘From my quick read, and it was only brief, it was a nephew called Trevor Markham.’

  And where was he now? ‘Should there have been more money?’ wondered Horton aloud, heading for Ventnor.

  ‘Perhaps this Markham found out he should have inherited more and killed both Hazleton and Lisle for revenge.’

  ‘Why bother when he could simply have exposed the fraud?’

  ‘Revenge? Or perhaps he’s a psycho case. Hazleton could have been swindling the account for years and stashing the money away for his retirement. Perhaps something triggered Arthur Lisle’s curiosity, he checked the file, and discovered the fraud. And tells Yately.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Perhaps Yately is related to this Trevor Markham or knew him. Angry that his friend or relative got duped, he confronts Hazleton and gets killed. Then Lisle does the same.’

  ‘But that means Lisle should be dead and not Hazleton.’

  ‘Something could have gone wrong. They struggled. Lisle accidentally kills Hazleton, tries to cover it up and then, filled with remorse, kills himself by driving his beloved old car into the sea and drowning. His body is swept away on the high tide.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t Yately or Lisle have reported the fraud to us, the police, instead of confronting Hazleton?’

  ‘Not everyone does.’

  ‘It doesn’t account for Yately wearing a woman’s dress though.’

  Cantelli polished off the last of his sandwich and frowned. ‘No.’

  ‘And that’s our sticking point on everything, Barney, except for Uckfield’s favoured theory of Abigail Lisle having an affair with Colin Yately, for which we have no evidence, not even a hint of it.’ Horton then told Cantelli about his walk to the shore and the thought that Hazleton could have been helping smugglers. ‘There’s a direct route up to his house and he could have been reporting all this suspicious lights stuff to the local police to make them consider him an idiot and stop investigating.’

  ‘Like that poem about Matilda telling such dreadful lies that when she did tell the truth about the house being on fire no one believed her and she perished in the flames.’

  ‘Something like that. But again we’re back to that dress. What are we missing, Barney?’ Horton said earnestly.

  ‘A lot,’ was Cantelli’s swift reply as Horton pulled up outside the temporary incident room at Ventnor.

  Dennings, jacketless and perspiring, glowered at them as they entered. He had a phone stuck to his ear, as did the other two officers in the room, and no sooner had one replaced the receiver than it rang again. Horton knew why — people were phoning in with reports of sightings of Yately and Lisle thanks to the Super’s earlier press briefing.

  Slamming down the receiver, Dennings said, ‘So far Arthur Lisle’s been seen climbing Tennyson Down, flying a helicopter at Bembridge Airport, sailing a boat out of Yarmouth, dossing in a doorway in Ryde and jet skiing across the Solent to Portsmouth; next he’ll be swimming the bloody English Channel.’

  Horton plonked the archive filing box on Dennings’ desk, causing him to start backwards. ‘Present for you, Tony.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Horton quickly brought him up to speed with the interview at the solicitor’s office and what Cantelli had found in the files. He said nothing about his jaunt to Hazleton’s house, and his reconnaissance of the coastline there.

  ‘You don’t mean we have to waste time sifting through that!’ cried Dennings incredulously. ‘Just because Lisle wanted to check up on some old paperwork.’

  Horton shrugged. ‘Please yourself. It’s your investigation.’ Horton turned to leave, prompting Dennings to say, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Back to Portsmouth.’

  ‘There’s work to be done here.’

  ‘Not by me and Sergeant Cantelli, there isn’t. We were asked to interview Wallingford and Chandler and we did, with that result.’ Horton jerked his head at the box.

  Dennings made to reply but his phone rang. He glared at it as though he could silence it by sheer willpower but it refused to obey him. As he grabbed it Marsden entered the room followed by two uniformed officers, one of whom was Claire Skinner. Horton returned her smile as he heard Dennings’ end of the conversation. ‘Look, I can’t get there now, I’m busy.’ There was a moment’s silence while the person at the other end replied. Then Dennings said, ‘Tell me what you’ve got. . I don’t want a report; I want you to tell me now how Hazleton died. . I know it’s complex, it’s a murder case,’ Dennings sneered. Horton silently winced. It didn’t need many guesses to know who the caller was. It had to be Dr Clayton, and Horton didn’t think she was going to be very pleased with the DI’s attitude. Dennings’ mobile rang. He snatched it up from his desk and, seeing who it was, said abruptly into his landline, ‘Email me the key points,’ before he rang off and turned his attention to his mobile.

  Horton slowly shook his head and made to leave as he heard Dennings say, ‘No, Guv. . Yes. . It’s been mad here. . I. . Yes, she says she’s finished. I can’t. . Yes he’s here. Horton,’ Denn
ings called out, then into his mobile. ‘OK. . but. . Yes, Guv.’ To Horton he growled, ‘You’re to go to the mortuary. The Super’s orders.’

  ‘Hope he squares it with my boss, then.’

  Horton didn’t wait to hear Dennings’ reply. He was secretly pleased with the way it had played out, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Dennings. He noted that Cantelli had already beaten a hasty retreat. Horton knew why. Even the smell of the mortuary was better than being stuck in an overheated room with a bad-tempered DI, and a cacophony of phones that would need to be politely answered.

  Outside, Cantelli said, ‘I almost feel sorry for Dennings.’

  Horton threw him the car keys and an astonished look.

  ‘I said almost. I wouldn’t have eaten those sandwiches if I’d known where we were going.’

  ‘You could go back and volunteer to man the phones.’

  ‘Think I’ll risk throwing up.’

  And Dr Clayton’s bad temper, thought Horton. But hopefully she’d have recovered her good humour by the time they arrived.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘I’m glad it’s you,’ Gaye said, ‘because I might not have been responsible for my actions if I’d come face to face with that oaf who’s supposed to be a detective. Surgery with a sharp knife on some vital parts might have been called for. Want to see the victim?’

  ‘Might as well, now we’re here,’ Horton answered, hoping the body would look better than when he’d last seen it. It didn’t. In fact, it looked marginally worse, with great ugly stitches across its forehead and up its chest where the mortuary attendant had sewn it back together again after Dr Clayton’s rummaging around inside. Horton tried to equate the body on the slab with the little man he’d seen in the observatory and couldn’t.

  The skin was white and smelt just as awful as when the boot of the car had been opened and the gruesome sight exposed, but he again noted that the sea life hadn’t eaten much into the flesh, the result of being in the boot and not in the sea for long.

  Dr Clayton said, ‘If you’ve seen enough I suggest we discuss it in more comfortable surroundings, for you that is.’

  With relief, Horton and Cantelli followed her into a room off the main mortuary, where Gaye nodded them towards an antibacterial hand wash, while she headed for a sink. ‘Have you traced the next of kin?’ she asked, wiping her wet hands on a paper towel before tossing it in a bin.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be anyone,’ Horton answered, eyeing her casually dressed slender figure and finding himself comparing it with Avril’s more shapely and more expensively dressed one. Annoyed with letting lustful thoughts intrude amid two horrific murders, he followed Gaye Clayton into the cubbyhole of an office, where she took the seat behind the desk and gestured them into the two opposite. Sitting back she eyed them keenly and crossed her jean-clad legs.

  ‘It’s difficult to give you an accurate time of death but in my opinion he was killed late Tuesday night or possibly in the early hours of Wednesday morning. I’d say between eight p.m. and one a.m.’

  Which tallied with Hazleton’s call to him on Tuesday evening at twenty-one thirty-five. ‘Was he alive when he was put in the car?’ he asked.

  ‘The initial evidence suggests not.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Horton replied with feeling.

  Gaye added, ‘There is evidence of silt and sea in his mouth, and I need to fully analyse the contents of the stomach to see if it contains large quantities of water and debris, but it’s my belief he died from a severe trauma to the cranium. There’s been heavy internal bleeding and he was struck more than once. In fact, three times, and violently, with something heavy and quite narrow, about two inches in diameter. I can’t say what though. That, along with the fact it’s doubtful he’d fall into the boot of the car, slam it shut and drive it into the sea makes it homicide.’

  ‘There would have been blood then?’

  ‘Yes, on the killer and in the location where he was struck.’

  And no blood had been found in Hazleton’s house or on the driveway. He could have been killed in the garden but the officer-in-charge of the search hadn’t found any bloodstained weapon while Horton had been there, and if he had after Horton had left then Dennings would have known about it. It was possible that the killer had disposed of the weapon and the rain had washed away traces of blood. Either that or Hazleton could have been killed in one of the bays. Only it had to be a bay with access to a road for the body to have been placed in the car, and Horton hadn’t seen any road leading back from the shore on his exploratory expedition. He hadn’t seen any tyre tracks either. He supposed that Hazleton’s body could have been transported to the Morris Minor, which was some distance away, in something such as a wheelbarrow, but lifting and pushing a lifeless form would take some strength.

  ‘The forensic examination of the victim’s clothes might help you,’ Gaye said. ‘You might be able to identify seeds, soil or gravel on them which match with the locale. Was there any forensic on the dress found on Yately that could give you an idea of where he might have been killed?’

  ‘Some sand and gravel but it’ll take at least a couple of days before we get the full results of the analysis. And so far we’ve found no evidence to suggest the dress belonged to either the late Mrs Lisle or Yately’s former wife.’

  ‘It’s of excellent quality, and the stitching and design indicate it wasn’t bought from any chain store. I’ve had another look at the notes we made of it at the time Tom removed it. I’d say it belonged to a woman the equivalent of UK dress size fourteen, and judging by its length a woman who was about five feet six inches tall.’

  And from what Horton remembered of the photographs he’d seen on the mantelpiece in the Lisle household, and the height given for Arthur Lisle, it didn’t sound as though the dress belonged to Abigail Lisle. She was a good deal shorter than her husband, who’d been described as being five-eleven, and Lisle’s GP had confirmed that. They’d check Abigail’s height of course.

  Gaye added, ‘As you know there was a faded label on the dress and I managed to enhance a photograph of it. It’s difficult to make it out completely but I did get some letters.’

  Horton sat forward keenly, as Gaye handed him a photograph of the dress and one of the label enhanced. Cantelli peered over Horton’s shoulder.

  Gaye said, ‘As you can see. It looks like the name Thea.’

  Horton’s eyes connected with Gaye’s for a moment as they both remembered the case that had brought Horton into contact with Thea Carlsson, the first woman he’d got close to since his marriage had ended. But it had finished before it had even begun. Thea had returned to her home country of Sweden and had given him no indication that she’d ever come back. With regret he’d been forced to put her out of his mind, but it was Thea who had urged him to continue with the search for his mother and it was largely down to her that he’d made the request to see his social services case files and made contact with Adrian Stanley. Horton wondered if Stanley had managed to say anything more about Jennifer.

  ‘What’s that?’ Cantelli asked, pointing to more lettering that had been enhanced. ‘It looks like an “O” and an “R”.’

  ‘I think it’s the name of the label or designer. I’m no fashion expert, you only have to look at me to see that,’ she smiled, indicating her jeans and T-shirt, ‘but the design reminded me of dresses I’ve seen in photographs of my mother. I’d say it dates from the 1970s and that whoever owned it had some money during that decade. They’ve also kept the dress somewhere relatively dry and dust free because it was in good condition.’

  If the dress hadn’t belonged to Abigail Lisle then could it have belonged to someone who had gone missing years ago, or who had been killed; a woman the killer had a connection with and so too did all three men: Lisle, Yately and Hazleton. Horton thought he’d check reports of missing women for the 1970s when he returned to the station. It wasn’t something he wished to delegate for fear the background on his personal life would be expo
sed and he certainly didn’t want DI bloody Dennings trampling all over his past.

  Cantelli’s voice broke through his thoughts. ‘I think my sister, Isabella, wore clothes like this. Could I have photographs of the dress and I’ll ask her expert opinion?’

  ‘Of course; I’ve also emailed it and that photograph of the label to Sergeant Trueman. Hopefully your fashion expert will be able to give you more information.’

  Horton hoped so too. He said, ‘How does Hazleton’s death compare to Yately’s?’

  ‘The method is similar. If you remember Yately was also struck on the back of the head, but the weapon used in his case was much larger, about seven inches in diameter, and he regained consciousness. A single blow to the head is rarely enough to kill someone unless the victim is unfortunate enough to have a thin skull, but several blows can. And it doesn’t always render them unconscious either, but it can make them dazed and confused long enough to be tied up, submerged and finally left to drown, as in Yately’s case. This latest victim was much older, and his cranium considerably thinner, so the same strength of blow could have rendered him unconscious, then your killer finished him off with a few more blows. There’s not much more I can tell you except the victim was very fit and healthy for a man of his age. No signs of living a life of excesses, and no major surgery, scars or tattoos and the like.’

  ‘Fit enough to climb a steep track?’ Horton asked, thinking of the one that led up from the small bay below the house.

  ‘Definitely. Sound heart muscles, no clogged arteries or lungs. I doubt he ever smoked and his liver was in good condition.’

  Horton rose. He was about to thank her when she said, ‘Are you heading back to Portsmouth? I could do with a lift. Sergeant Elkins has been called away to investigate a boat theft at the Hamble.’

  Horton willingly agreed. ‘If Cantelli feels sick on the ferry he’ll have his own personal physician on board.’

  ‘I might need one,’ muttered Cantelli.