Walters greeted him with the news that the Clements had never made an insurance claim. ‘And Trevor Lukein is not a thief.’
‘Your view is based on what?’
‘My gut.’ Walters patted his rounded stomach.
‘Oh, good, I’ll tell the Clements that. I’m sure they’ll be pleased,’ Horton said facetiously, opening his sandwiches.
‘But he doesn’t like them.’
‘Them?’
‘Well, him. He says Vivian Clements is a pompous little prat. Well, OK, he didn’t say that exactly, but that’s the gist of it.’
‘What did he say exactly?’
‘That Mr Clements is particular to the point of fussiness and stands over Lukein while he services the alarm to make sure he’s doing it properly. Clements doesn’t speak, just watches and breathes heavily. Lukein says he’s tried to engage him in conversation in the past, several times, but gave up when he got no response. In fact, Clements told Lukein, “You’re not here to talk about the weather or the state of the country, you’re here to do a job so get on with it”.’
Cantelli looked up. ‘Sounds about right from what we’ve seen of Vivian Clements.’
Walters nodded agreement. ‘He struck me as a jumped-up little—’
‘And what did Lukein have to say about Constance Clements?’ Horton interrupted, biting into his egg and cress.
‘Nice woman, apologizes for her old man. Looks embarrassed. Always offers him a cup of tea which Mr Clements disapproves of and which Lukein accepts just to get up Clements’ nose.’
‘Does Lukein go into the collection room?’
‘Yes. He has to check the sensors in there. He says he’s made some comments on the collection, you know, nice stuff and that sort of thing, but he only got a tart reply from Clements to do what he was paid to do. He remembers seeing the guns but as Clements wasn’t forthcoming he didn’t comment on them.’
‘How often does he service the alarms?’
‘Every six months. The last time was on the twenty-ninth of October as Clements claimed. But Hugh Treadware says Clements hasn’t paid for it yet. He isn’t a prompt payer. Treadware always has to chase but this time Clements is spinning it out even longer.’
‘Financial troubles?’ Horton mused.
Walters shrugged. ‘His credit rating’s OK. Perhaps he’s just mean.’
‘Check with the shipping line that they were actually on that cruise and returned on Monday. Contact the international port, ask them if they have any CCTV footage from Monday morning. If so, ask them to send it over.’
‘You looking for the Clements disembarking?’
‘No, I’m looking for Evelyn Lyster.’
‘Why?’
‘Because someone could have put a drug in her flask.’
‘They’re hardly likely to do it in the port.’
‘Just do it, Walters, and while you’re at it contact the taxi companies and find out if any of them picked her up from her apartment.’
‘What’s she look like?’
Cantelli interjected, ‘Guilbert’s sent over a photograph her son gave him. It was taken at his wedding last March. I’ve circulated it to the private airfields.’
Horton finished off his sandwich and crossed to Cantelli’s computer where he studied the picture. Evelyn Lyster was taller than the man beside her, who was obviously her husband, the late Dennis Lyster. He was thin, slightly hunched and looked older than his wife. Judging by the troubled look on his narrow features he was clearly ill at ease. Evelyn wasn’t exactly beaming herself but she appeared confident. She was dressed elegantly in a cream and black outfit with a wide-brimmed cream hat with black trimming. Gina Lyster, in a cream, knee-length modern wedding dress, was beaming at her husband, a tanned, muscular man with cropped dark hair and a rather solemn expression.
Horton addressed Walters. ‘Evelyn Lyster is the older woman and not the one in the wedding dress,’ he explained, because with Walters you never knew. He gave him a description of what she’d been wearing when her body had been found.
Cantelli said, ‘I briefed Inspector Guilbert about our visit to Evelyn Lyster’s flat. He says Condor ferries are checking to see if she booked on any of their sailings over the last couple of years and he’s got an officer liaising with the airlines. Elkins has also got her photograph and is checking out the marinas. Guilbert’s officers are doing the same in the marinas in Guernsey.’
While drinking his coffee, Horton briefed Cantelli and Walters about the autopsy results and what he and Uckfield had found at Freedman’s flat.
‘It was very like Evelyn Lyster’s apartment in that there were very few personal items in it and no photographs.’
‘Well, there are a few pictures on his website,’ Cantelli said, jerking his head at the computer screen. He’d called it up while Horton had been talking. Horton leaned over. He found himself studying a slender man with slightly overlong dark hair streaked with grey. He was casually but smartly dressed and smiling into camera, displaying a mouth of the cosmetically enhanced teeth that Dr Clayton had pointed out. The photograph had been professionally taken. Horton wondered by whom. He recognized the clothes as those he’d seen in his flat.
In another two photographs, Freedman was wearing a microphone head set and the picture had clearly been taken at one of his public seminars. There was another of him more serious, wearing a suit and looking into camera with bright, penetrating grey eyes and a strong-featured but ravaged face. Horton got the impression of a charismatic man full of nervous energy, with a zest for life tinged with something else that he couldn’t put his finger on. Was there a slightly sardonic air about him? A superiority with a hint of danger?
Cantelli said, ‘It says here that he’s been down as low as any man could get, and only prison and the discovery of neuro-linguistic programming and gaining his coaching qualifications took him out of the cesspit. He knows what it’s like to be at rock bottom, desperate and despairing, to suffer extreme stress, to feel a failure and by knowing this his mission in life is to help others.’
‘For a fee, and from what Uckfield told me about Freedman’s finances, quite a hefty one at that.’ But despite that, Horton thought all credit to the man. He’d pulled himself up from the gutter, overcome alcohol addiction and turned himself into a success, which had earned him a large income. That had been no mean feat. It took guts, determination and willpower, all of which Freedman had once lacked because he’d succumbed to drink, but then that was easy when your world felt as though it was collapsing around you. He should know. What had caused Freedman’s descent? Business pressures? Matrimonial problems?
He thought it time he briefed Bliss on the interview with the Clements. Uckfield would have told her about the results of the autopsy and what they’d found in Freedman’s flat.
The incident suite was a hive of activity. Uckfield was in his office, the door was open and even from a distance Horton could see he was red-eyed and red-nosed, coughing and sneezing into his handkerchief. Horton was surprised Trueman hadn’t set up a cordon around him.
‘I was thinking about it,’ he said solemnly. He reported that Marsden and Somerfield had gone into Freedman’s apartment block to interview the residents and he’d requested CCTV from the area. A team were also bagging up all the paperwork and Freedman’s computer. There had been a few reports from the public of sightings of Freedman which were being checked out. ‘But seeing as most of them come from out of the area they’re probably a waste of time.’ Trueman told him that Freedman was divorced and had no kids.
‘We’re trying to track down his former wife.’
‘Any joy with Freedman’s coat?’
‘Not so far. The Super’s going to release a picture of it to the media tomorrow. Or rather, DCI Bliss is.’
Horton crossed to her temporary office. What they had on the Clements’ robbery didn’t seem to please her but then very little did. Horton said nothing about his and his team’s enquiries into Evelyn Lyster’s death
– that would please her even less. He told her that Walters was going to interview the cleaners tomorrow and that he was calling on Glyn Ashmead at Gravity.
On his return to CID, Walters reported that the shipping company had confirmed that Vivian and Constance Clements had been on the cruise to China which had left Portsmouth on 19 December and returned to the port at six a.m. on Monday, 13 January. The passengers had disembarked at eight forty-five. The robbery had been reported at nine twenty. Uniform had attended at nine thirty-five and called CID because it involved firearms. Walters reached the Clements’ house at nine fifty-five and had returned on Tuesday with the crime-scene officer. The cruise company also confirmed that Vivian Clements had been engaged as one of their guest lecturers.
Walters added, ‘The port also has CCTV footage for all of Monday morning. They’re emailing it over now and none of the taxi companies picked up a fare by the name of Evelyn Lyster or from that address, but I’ve sent round her photograph.’
Then perhaps a friend had driven her to the port. Horton didn’t think she would have caught a bus. She didn’t seem the type. He still needed to see the paperwork associated with the purchase of the Clements’ pistols but Cantelli would get that tomorrow. He detailed Walters to interview Valentines the cleaners in the morning. ‘And while you’re there, ask if they clean for Peter Freedman and Evelyn Lyster.’
He turned his attention to his paperwork and to answering his messages and emails. Elkins rang in to report that the Hayling Ferry crew hadn’t seen anyone hanging around at the top of the pontoon on Tuesday night and no one in the local marinas recognized Evelyn Lyster, but he’d left her photograph with them and would try the marinas on Hayling Island, Fareham and at Emsworth tomorrow and circulate it to those in Southampton and on the Isle of Wight.
It was just after seven thirty when Cantelli knocked and entered.
‘Just had Ables Taxis on the line. One of their drivers, Adrian Woolacombe, remembers picking up Evelyn Lyster at the Hard on Monday morning at eleven minutes past seven.’
Horton raised his eyebrows. ‘Then she didn’t come directly from her apartment.’
‘Looks that way. Woolacombe’s on duty all night at the Hard. Want me to interview him?’
‘No. I’ll do it.’ Horton had nothing to go home for. Cantelli had his family. He also had a sick mother staying with him. Horton sent him on his way, telling him to escape before he could be roped into the incident suite and the Freedman investigation. Walters looked hopeful but Horton told him to finish writing up his reports for the day before leaving. It was amazing how fast Walters could type when motivated in the correct way. Half an hour later, he saw from his office window that Uckfield’s car had gone. But Bliss and Dennings were still here. He hadn’t been summoned so he assumed he wasn’t needed and that everything that could be done was being done. Before Bliss could change her mind, he quickly made his escape and headed for the taxi rank on the waterfront and Adrian Woolacombe.
TEN
‘Yes, I remember her. What’s she done?’ Woolacombe said in answer to Horton’s question when he showed him the photograph of Evelyn Lyster. Woolacombe, a stout, short man with a pale, jowly face, put down his crime novel and climbed out of the third taxi from the front of the rank. The wind lifted a few fine strands of greying hair that flapped over his large, balding head. He pushed them down with fat fingers but they refused to stay put in the blustery wind that brought with it the smell of the sea and diesel fumes and the rumble and screeching of the trains on the long and sturdy pier to their left.
‘What direction did she come from?’ Horton asked, ducking the question.
Woolacombe looked slightly bemused. ‘From the station, of course.’
‘You actually saw her come out of the railway station?’ And not from behind him, which was where she would have approached if she’d walked from her apartment or had alighted from a bus.
‘Well, no. I didn’t actually see that.’
‘So she could have come from the Gosport ferry.’ That was also in the same direction, Horton thought, glancing at the lights on the shore opposite before letting them travel back to the fat man in front of him.
Woolacombe’s fleshy face puckered up as he considered this. ‘I guess she could have done. She didn’t say. She climbed in the back and asked me to take her to the international port.’
‘What was her manner like?’
‘Chilly. I chatted to her, trying to be friendly and asked if she was catching one of the ferries to France or the Channel Islands but she said, “Just take me to the port, please.” I thought, well, pardon me for breathing.’
‘She said, “please” though.’
Woolacombe looked taken aback. ‘Yeah, she did actually.’
Polite, then, but not keen to engage in social chitchat. No crime in that.
‘I glanced at her in my mirror a few times but she was just staring out of the window.’
‘Did she seem sad or anxious?’
‘Not so you’d notice. She wasn’t nervy or crying or anything like that. Just staring. Thoughtful, like.’
‘Did she have a phone with her? Did she call or text anyone?’
‘I didn’t see her with a phone or using one and no one called her while she was in the cab.’
‘How did she pay you?’
‘By cash. She gave a ten per cent tip, too, in cash.’
‘What was she carrying?’
‘No luggage, if that’s what you mean. Just her handbag.’
‘But you still asked her if she was catching a ferry.’
‘Yes, it was just natural, I guess, taking her to the port. She could have been meeting someone, I suppose. Why all the questions? Has she run off with someone’s dosh?’ He smiled as he spoke.
‘She’s dead.’
Woolacombe stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘You don’t mean—’
‘We just need to establish some background facts,’ Horton said evasively. ‘She was found dead on the ferry to Guernsey.’
‘Poor woman. How did she die?’
‘Did you watch her enter the terminal building?’
‘No. I drove off. I didn’t check my mirrors.’
‘Did you see her with a cup flask or take a drink from a bottle?’
‘No. Like I said, she just sat looking out of the window.’
‘Have you ever picked her up before anywhere?’
‘Can’t say that I have.’
Horton thanked him and made for the Gosport ferry, skirting the railway station on his left where the entrance to the terminal for the Isle of Wight Fast Cat ferry to Ryde was also situated. Guilbert hadn’t found a ticket for either the Gosport or the Isle of Wight ferry or a train ticket in her possessions but she could have ditched it in one of the litter bins he could see on his route. Or perhaps she had come from her apartment, approaching the taxi rank from a roundabout way. But why should she? He was becoming increasingly more puzzled by her death. There was so much that just didn’t make sense.
He could see the small green and white Gosport ferry on the other side of the harbour. It only took four minutes to cross the water so he waited along with several other people. As he stared across at the shimmering lights of the town opposite he again wondered if it had been his mother’s final destination. He could see the masts of the yachts in Haslar Marina to his left and those in Gosport Marina to his right. Rising between them were the lights in the tower blocks much like the high-rise flat he’d lived in for a few years with his mother but on this side of the harbour. The only visitor he could remember was a man with a big flash car, the same man he thought had taken them to Bembridge on the Isle of Wight – not by boat, he would have remembered that, so it must have been on the car ferry which he could see leaving its berth to his left and swinging out into the harbour. That man hadn’t been Andrew Ducale. He thought it more likely to have been Jennifer’s boss at the casino, Charlie Warner, but he could be mistaken as he couldn’t recall his features. Before that there had be
en a succession of men in the tiny, terraced house they’d lived in in a crowded area on the western edge of the city, not far from the police station. As he’d grown up he had assumed they were his mother’s callers and that his mother had been a prostitute because that had been the picture painted of her by those in authority, but now he wasn’t so sure. They had lived and slept in one room upstairs and shared a bathroom and kitchen downstairs so the men could have been calling on the occupant of the other room. Or had Jennifer cultivated their acquaintance because she’d been gathering intelligence on possible IRA suspects or been involved with the IRA as Dormand had said? Whose side had she been on, if anyone’s? She hadn’t been Irish or Catholic. Her parents had been born and had lived and died just outside Bristol.
The ferry docked and disgorged its passengers. Horton showed his warrant card and the photograph of Evelyn Lyster, and asked if the crewman remembered seeing her on board on Monday morning.
‘I wasn’t on shift,’ came the reply. ‘You need to come back tomorrow morning and ask the crew on that sailing.’
Horton said he would. He headed through the railway station to the Wightlink terminal and got the same response from the staff there. He made for his marina but instead of turning into it he decided to revisit the scene of Freedman’s death in the light of Gaye’s findings. He pulled up in front of the houseboats. There were no longer any officers at the scene but a remnant of blue-and-white police tape was trailing on the stones, the wind lifting it like a kite and sending it flapping and falling.
Lethal Waves Page 11