Shroud of Evil

by Pauline Rowson

  ‘He wouldn’t be that stupid.’

  ‘Let’s hope he is and we can nail him.’

  Walters still looked dubious. ‘It’s a bit of a long shot, guv.’

  And one that involved Walters getting off his fat arse. ‘Better that than no shot at all. Anything on the suspects you and PC Tina Collins have identified?’

  ‘Nah, all three have alibis. There are no signs of blue emulsion paint on their premises or in their rubbish bins. And please don’t ask me to go to the household waste tip,’ Walters pleaded.

  It wouldn’t help anyway but he wasn’t going to tell Walters that. ‘I’ll save that for later, if you don’t catch him. Have you called on the other restaurants in the street that’s been targeted?’

  ‘No.’ Walters sounded surprised.

  ‘Do so. Find out what their security is like and the state of their kitchens. Note any that look dubious on both accounts.’

  And depending on how many there were, they might be worth watching. The only trouble was they didn’t know when they might be attacked. It could involve surveillance over several nights and Bliss would never sanction the overtime for that. But DC Walters might do it if he thought he’d get a free meal out of it for every night of the week.

  ‘Well get a move on. You’ve got plenty to do.’

  Walters heaved his bulk from the chair and his jacket from the back of it with about as much enthusiasm as a snail crossing a road. Horton entered his office, took one look at his desk and decided to leave everything where it was and head for the Isle of Wight.

  SIXTEEN

  Cantelli rang while Horton was on the ferry.

  ‘Kenton didn’t receive any powerboat training from the companies I’ve spoken to,’ he reported. ‘I thought I’d visit the local ones and show his photo around but no one remembers him, and those I’ve phoned further afield and emailed his photo to say they’ve never seen or heard of him.’

  Elkins was checking with the marinas on the island to see if Kenton had put in at any of them but Horton couldn’t see how he could have done without some training on how to use the boat and navigate the Solent. And that meant if he had gone across to the island, and if the marina manager and boat salesman could be believed, Kenton must have gone with someone who knew about boats.

  Cantelli said he’d write that up for Trueman and he’d deal with other CID matters. Horton’s thoughts turned to his mother, as they so often did these days. He again wondered if his foster parents’ neighbours were still living in the same house and if so whether the Litchfields had ever said anything about his background and his mother to them. It was years ago and a long shot, but like he’d told Walters, it was better than no shot at all. Perhaps he’d get time later today to check.

  As the Isle of Wight drew closer Horton rose and walked to the front of the ferry. He stared through the wide windows. To the right of the single berth of the Fishbourne ferry terminal, along the shore westward was a long stretch of wooded area and beyond that the small creek bordering Eames’ land, which he couldn’t see from here. He wondered if he should call Harriet Eames and ask her if she knew Kenton. Had she already been asked? Had her father primed her what to say? Did she know Kenton’s body had been found close to her father’s house? And was she still pursuing the investigation into the international jewellery robberies that DCS Sawyer of the Intelligence Directorate thought this mastermind criminal Zeus was connected with and he in turn with Jennifer’s disappearance? Did Zeus exist? Was there any truth in that story? There was the brooch that Jennifer had owned and which the constable who had been ordered to investigate her disappearance had ended up with. The brooch and all photographic evidence of it had disappeared, the police constable was dead but DCS Sawyer had claimed the brooch had come from a jewellery theft they believed had been perpetrated by Zeus. Was that just bullshit? Horton thought so because he’d searched the stolen arts and antiques database and there was no record of the brooch, according to his admittedly rather vague description of it.

  He turned his gaze in the opposite direction, eastwards, and again past the Fishbourne terminal there were more woods. These belonged to Northwood Abbey. There was a small inlet and then more woods before a stretch of grass which led up to the Veermans’ property. As the ferry drew closer he could also see Veerman’s boathouse. It would have been easy for Veerman to have brought Kenton’s boat over here. Easy for him to have killed Kenton and left him under the upturned dinghy. Easy to have returned by Kenton’s boat to the Hamble. And easy for him to transport the body in the dinghy on Saturday morning to Lord Eames’ shore. No one would have taken any notice of a man sailing a dinghy with what looked like an old sail cloth lying in it. And if Veerman was guilty of killing Kenton then he had an accomplice because as Horton had already surmised that accomplice had then driven Kenton’s car to the Admiralty Towers car park at four forty-two on Saturday morning.

  The call for passengers to return to their cars jolted Horton out of his thoughts and on disembarking some ten minutes later he headed for the Veermans’ house where he found the gates closed. He pressed the intercom but there was no answer and no sound of dogs barking. He could see a car on the driveway in front of the garages. It must be Thelma Veerman’s because it wasn’t Brett Veerman’s Volvo. He guessed she was walking the dogs. He left the Harley outside the house and turned in the direction she’d taken him on Saturday, towards the abbey, which was where he was officially meant to be going anyway.

  He glanced at the ruins of the old abbey on his right. Behind the grass and moss-covered broken walls a thin plume of smoke rose in the autumn afternoon. There was not a breath of wind but cloud was beginning to obscure the sun. The air felt clammy with the threat of rain. There was no sign of Thelma Veerman or her dogs in the fields in front of the abbey ruins and neither could he see her in the abbey grounds. Perhaps she’d be at home when he returned, he thought, heading for the café and gift shop where he found Cliff Yately, the café manager with his right hand and forearm bandaged and in a sling.

  ‘Been in the wars?’ Horton said, nodding at it.

  ‘My own fault. I slipped on the wet kitchen floor and landed on it. And it was me who washed the floor. Sprained it. Good job Mrs Veerman was around to put it right. Coffee?’

  Horton hesitated. He was awash with caffeine. But when Yately added the words ‘home-made cake’ he submitted.

  ‘Not the best of jobs to do one-handed,’ Horton said, as Yately placed Horton’s coffee on the tray resting on the counter.

  ‘You can say that again. But we’re short-handed, excuse the pun. Thought I’d at least help out as best I can, and it’s amazing how you adapt,’ he added, expertly placing the slice of cake on the plate and putting it on the tray. ‘On the house.’

  ‘No. I’ll pay for it. I’m sure every little helps to keep the abbey going.’

  ‘It does indeed.’

  ‘Is Brother Norman around?’

  Yately turned to address the shabbily dressed man in patched dark green corduroy trousers, a checked faded shirt, woollen scarf and gloves who’d emerged from the kitchens clutching a large bucket of slops. Horton smiled a greeting at Jay Ottley who nodded but Horton couldn’t tell if there had been a smile behind the hairy fuzz.

  ‘Tell Brother Norman that Inspector Horton would like a word.’

  He nodded and ambled off. Horton took his coffee and lemon drizzle cake into the tea room garden where he found a quiet arbour tucked away in the shrubs. His phone rang. It was Cantelli.

  ‘Charlotte’s nursing friend’s come up trumps.’

  ‘Veerman.’

  ‘Yes. He was operating until eight thirty-five on Thursday night.’

  That still gave him plenty of time to meet Kenton at Hamble Marina, cross to the island, kill him and return to the Hamble alone on Kenton’s boat.

  ‘Call the Wightlink ferry and ask if Veerman travelled to the island late Thursday night. If he didn’t then see if you can find out where he was. Thelma Veerman wasn�
�t in when I called there earlier. But I’m going back to see if she’s returned.’

  Horton rang off and stared around the exquisitely tended, expansive garden. It was deserted. His mind went back down the years and he saw Bernard tending his small patch of earth, planting out the flowers and vegetables he’d grown from seed in the greenhouse attached to the end of the garage. It was a passion that Horton had never understood as a teenager. He hadn’t seen the point in spending hours labouring outside, usually in the wind and cold, but he understood the lure of the hobby now even though gardening wasn’t his thing. Even when he’d lived with Catherine he hadn’t done much to their modestly sized garden except cut the grass and usually only when Catherine had nagged him. He’d either been working or sailing. It hadn’t left much time for Catherine, he thought with a twinge of guilt. Then Emma had been born and she had become his passion, his obsession and his love. Sipping his coffee he remembered that Cantelli had once said that Catherine was antagonistic towards him because she was jealous of his love for his daughter. And now, looking back on his relationship with Catherine, he knew he had never loved her. He had merely wanted to be in love with her.

  He drank his coffee and tried to let the tranquillity of the abbey gardens ease his loneliness. He let the silence settle on him, finding it pleasant just as he found the silence at sea relaxing and at the same time invigorating. But his mind began to fill with thoughts of his daughter and the ache of missing her. That was the problem with silence, he thought with bitterness. It made you think, and often about the things you didn’t want to think about.

  He swallowed his coffee. It was too late now to save his marriage. Besides, there was no longer a marriage to be saved. They were divorced and Catherine had moved on and with a swiftness that had hurt, angered and surprised him and which had made him wonder if she’d been only too glad to have an excuse to ditch him. Her latest boyfriend was a wealthy businessman. He wasn’t jealous of his wealth, or the fact Catherine was now with someone else – as far he was concerned she could do what she wanted with her life – but the thought that Emma, his daughter, was seeing a succession of men with her mother, and that one of those men might eventually become a permanent fixture, supplanting him, caused his heart to constrict in a spasm of hurt and anger. It also made him recall seeing different men with his mother, one of whom he’d always been told she’d run off with. Who had those men been? How many? Or had he simply imagined there were several because that was what he had been told for so long as a child?

  ‘I hear you were asking to see me.’ A man’s voice jolted him out of his reminisces. He looked up to see Brother Norman.

  Horton made to rise but Brother Norman waved him back in to his seat and took the one opposite.

  ‘I thought you’d like to know the two men who robbed the abbey have been sentenced.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Horton sensed a subdued energy in the monk’s lean body but there was pain in his eyes, and something deeper and darker, with a jolt Horton thought he’d seen that expression before. He’d witnessed it in the beachcomber’s eyes when the man had handed him his card. The eyes reflected an accumulation of life’s experiences. He wondered fleetingly what people read in his eyes.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked.

  But Brother Norman again removed his hand from the sleeve of his habit and held it up in refusal. It was a strong hand, thought Horton, recalling the beachcomber’s as he’d given Horton that business card with the phoney name on it. It had been suntanned, unlike Brother Norman’s pale one, and it hadn’t contained any jewellery – and neither, he recalled, had there been any evidence of paint on it or under the fingernails. Surely there would have been if Lomas had really been an artist. But Horton had stopped believing that a while ago.

  ‘Sorry, I’ve been working in the vegetable garden,’ Brother Norman apologized, mistaking Horton’s thoughtful frown for distaste as he eyed his grimy hand. ‘The earth gets everywhere.’ He twisted the signet ring and plucked under his nail with his fingernails as though ashamed there was dirt.

  Horton hastily waved aside his apologies. ‘I was thinking of a case,’ he explained. ‘Nothing to do with the robbery here. They received two years custodial each.’

  ‘That long!’

  Not long enough if you ask me, thought Horton. ‘They both have previous convictions for theft. They would have got longer if they hadn’t changed their plea. You don’t look very pleased.’

  ‘I don’t think prison will make either of them reform.’

  ‘Probably not but it keeps them off the streets and prevents them from violating others.’

  ‘For a while.’

  ‘You don’t believe in retribution?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘What kind of sentence would you have given them?’ Horton asked, interested.

  ‘They could have come to work here.’

  ‘Community payback. They’ve both done that and been given chances, countless times. It didn’t work.’

  ‘No more than prison will.’

  ‘Some people are habitual criminals; no matter how many chances they are given they will always steal, kill, maim, torture. There are countless reasons why they do it and that’s not my jurisdiction. I just help to catch them.’

  ‘Isn’t that a rather simple answer?’

  ‘Maybe but it’s the only one for a copper,’ Horton said rather tersely. What did this monk know about the real world? How many times had he witnessed evil? How many times had he stared into the eyes of a killer and seen only mockery and triumph? And how many innocent victims had he had to deal with traumatized by their ordeal? None.

  Brother Norman returned Horton’s slightly hostile gaze with equanimity. OK, so he’d given a rather flippant answer and one that he didn’t necessarily believe in, because if Bernard hadn’t taken a chance on him then he might have ended up doing time. And if Horton hadn’t helped Johnnie Oslow, Cantelli’s nephew, after he’d committed an arson offence when he was sixteen then he too might have continued on the downward spiral of crime instead of being a very successful yachtsman. But Horton wasn’t here to indulge in philosophical or religious discussion.

  Cliff Yately appeared beside them. ‘Sorry to drag you away, Brother Norman, but Brother David in the bookshop would like a word.’

  Brother Norman rose. ‘Thank you for coming to tell me, Inspector.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Horton made his way back to the Veermans feeling a little irritated by Brother Norman’s complacent manner. But then he should have expected it from a religious man – after all they were meant to be charitable; forgive those that trespass and all that stuff. Forgiveness wasn’t Horton’s job, he just caught the buggers, and he hoped they’d catch whoever had killed Kenton. Although at the pace this investigation was going he doubted it. He stifled the sense of guilt that rose up in him at the thought that he too might be hindering the investigation by keeping silent.

  He was saved from further internal debate over Brother Norman’s less than enthusiastic response to the conviction of the abbey thieves by a telephone call from Elkins who said that Kenton hadn’t put in at any of the marinas on the island or along the coast.

  When Horton reached the Veermans’ house the gates were still closed and there was no answer to his summons on the intercom. Frustrated at the thought that he would have to return tomorrow he caught the four o’clock sailing and was back in his office by five.

  Cantelli greeted him with the news that Veerman’s car hadn’t been booked on any late-night sailing on Thursday or any return sailing to the mainland on Friday morning.

  ‘And Brenda, Charlotte’s nursing friend, just called to say that Veerman was booked into one of the rooms in the nurses’ accommodation on Thursday night. The consultants sometimes stay over at the hospital if they need to be on call for a critically ill patient.’

  ‘Did anyone see him there?’

  ‘Not that I know of, but short of que
stioning everyone on the ward and in the nurses’ accommodation we won’t know.’

  And that didn’t look as though it would happen. ‘He could have left the hospital and gone to Hamble Marina.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he have been taking a risk if the patient had a relapse and he was sent for?’

  ‘Perhaps he knew the patient would be OK. Or perhaps he briefed a fellow surgeon to stand in for him in case of complications.’ Horton rang through to Uckfield and told him he hadn’t been able to speak to Thelma Veerman but he relayed what Cantelli had discovered, adding, ‘It looks as though he might not have an alibi.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean he’s a killer.’

  ‘No, but it does mean we should question him.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘When?’ Horton asked, exasperated.

  ‘When I bloody well say so,’ snapped Uckfield and rang off.

  Horton glared at his phone. Restless and irritated by the lack of activity Horton crossed to Walters who had just returned.

  ‘No joy with the hardware stores, guv. But I’ve identified a couple of restaurants along that road that could be possible targets: Indian and Turkish, both have got crap security systems. I gave the owners a lecture on getting better security but I don’t think they understood a bloody word I was saying. Just threw their hands about and nodded.’

  Sounds like Uckfield, thought Horton with bitterness, except the fat man wasn’t doing any hand waving.

  He returned to his office and spent an agitated couple of hours shuffling paper around his desk. When Cantelli and Walters left Horton also called it a day. He didn’t feel that he had achieved very much. But there was something he could do and which might give him information and it wasn’t connected with the Kenton investigation or the racist slogans in the restaurants.