Shroud of Evil

by Pauline Rowson

  He tried her number again at the ferry terminal but still got no answer. Cantelli handed the electronic ticket to a very wet and clearly very unhappy member of the marshalling staff who zapped the bar code on it with a hand-held device and quickly turned away. Cantelli hastily let the window back up and wiped the inside of the door where the rain had beaten in. He looked worried and Horton knew why; it was very windy and the ferry crossing would be far from smooth.

  ‘Just don’t let them bury me at sea,’ Cantelli said, as they were waved on board.

  Cantelli refused all refreshment and took a seat at a table away from the windows, which he’d been told was the best position to avoid the worst of the rolling of the ferry. He didn’t look as though he believed that. Horton bought a Diet Coke. He had just reached the table when his phone rang. It was Gaye Clayton.

  ‘I’m sorry, Andy, but I can’t find anyone who saw Brett Veerman in the ward or in the nurses’ hostel on Thursday night. He was definitely in surgery until eight thirty-five, and he did have clinics on Friday morning as well as hospital rounds. He went to the private hospital on Friday afternoon just after four p.m. That’s all I can get about his movements but my sources tell me he is very well liked and respected. He’s considered rather dishy and sexy. Has a good sense of humour and is courteous and polite and rather charming. In fact he seems to have attracted a kind of hero worship.’

  ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t been mobbed.’

  She laughed. ‘If he wasn’t suspected of murder I might fancy him myself. There’s no gossip about him having affairs though. Do I still get a free meal?’

  ‘Sure you wouldn’t prefer to dine out with Mr Veerman?’ he joked.

  ‘Positive. He might poison me.’

  ‘Let’s hope the restaurant food doesn’t. When are you free?’ he said, pleased.

  ‘No time like the present. Tonight?’

  ‘Sounds good. I’ll—’

  ‘No. I’ll pick you up in the Mini. I don’t mind a ride on your Harley but if you’re taking me to a posh restaurant I don’t fancy turning up looking like a drowned rat with flattened hair.’

  Horton swiftly tried to imagine Gaye’s short spiky auburn hair flattened and couldn’t. He smiled. ‘Eight o’clock.’

  ‘Great.’

  He rang off with Cantelli eyeing him smugly and for the moment seemingly oblivious that the ferry was out at sea.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Cantelli asked.

  ‘Nowhere near where Walters will be,’ Horton answered promptly. And after their meal? He didn’t like to think that far ahead.

  The ferry bucked and rolled. The car alarms on the decks below began to sound. Cantelli’s skin paled.

  ‘Close your eyes and think of England.’

  ‘Not sure that will work,’ Cantelli said gloomily.

  ‘OK then we’ll go over the details of Kenton’s murder.’ They did but it threw up no new thoughts except that it highlighted the apparent dual personality of Jasper Kenton. Horton told Cantelli he’d also called the yacht brokerage that morning after he’d spoken to Rob in the marina office and discovered that Jasper Kenton didn’t even want to give the boat a trial run when he was in the process of purchasing it. ‘The salesman started up the engine and Kenton said that it sounded OK to him.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like a very thorough man to me.’

  ‘Me neither. The salesman also confirmed that the boat had just a small amount of fuel in the tank and that he hadn’t topped it up. He said there was no need if Kenton didn’t want to take it out for a trial run. Kenton said he trusted the brokerage to provide him with a boat they claimed was in perfect working order.’

  Cantelli raised his dark eyebrows. ‘For a PI, and someone who’d worked in security, he was very trusting.’

  And that didn’t ring true. Horton rang Trueman and asked him if he had anything on the sail that Kenton had been wrapped in.

  ‘Just got the preliminary report. It’s a gaff-rigged mainsail.’

  That surprised Horton and worried him a little. A gaff-rigged mainsail was hoisted up by a pole called a gaff. It was shaped like a truncated triangle but with four sides rather than three, with two short sides top and bottom and two longer sides right and left. They were used on more traditional and classic sailing yachts, not the type of dinghy that Veerman had in his garden nor the yacht Thelma Veerman had told him they’d owned before her son had left home.

  Trueman said, ‘The size of this sail indicates it comes from a yacht no bigger than twenty-two feet. The sail is anything between ten and five years old. It’s been used but is still waterproof.’

  ‘Which means that the body was in sea water before being wrapped in it.’

  ‘Yes. There’s no number on it, which the lab says suggests it was made as a spare sail or possibly for a boat designed by the owner.’

  Not much help then.

  Trueman said, ‘It could have been lying around somewhere for months, years even.’

  Horton recalled the beachcomber’s words. ‘I search for bits of flotsam and jetsam I find on the beach that I can turn into art.’ Had he found the sail and after killing Kenton had decided to turn him into a work of art? If so the man was mad and Horton had prevented him from being apprehended. He shifted uneasily as Trueman continued, ‘The lab is trying to find traces of earth or gravel on it which we might be able to match.’

  ‘If we knew where it came from. How are Marsden and Somerfield getting on with the archery clubs?’

  ‘They’re not. No one matches up with any names we have in the investigation so far.’

  Gaye’s words about the weapon being used by soldiers overseas darted into Horton’s mind and he experienced an uncomfortable few moments as he considered that Veerman was nothing but a smoke screen of his own choosing to divert attention from the real killer, the beachcomber, who could be ex-forces. Thoughts of Bernard Litchfield flashed before him in his RAF uniform with flak jacket and guns. But swiftly he pushed them aside and reminded himself of the facts that made Veerman a suspect – which, he thought with some anxiety, were all circumstantial.

  Horton asked Trueman to keep him updated on new developments and said he and Cantelli were on their way to re-interview Thelma Veerman.

  Cantelli made no effort to hide his relief as they disembarked from the ferry. Switching on the windscreen wipers he said, ‘I only hope the wind drops by the time we return.’

  ‘We’ll have Thelma Veerman’s statement to consider by then; that should occupy us.’ But Horton had tried her number twice on the ferry and still no answer. Perhaps he should call Eunice Swallows and see if she had a mobile number for Thelma Veerman but that would mean explaining to Bliss why he had asked for it, because Eunice was bound to tell her.

  Horton gave Cantelli directions to the Veermans’ house. If they got no joy there they’d try the abbey.

  The gates were closed and her car was on the driveway and still in the same position as yesterday. Horton didn’t think it had been moved, unless she always parked in that exact spot. He thought that unusual but dismissed it. There was no answer when Cantelli pressed the intercom and there didn’t look to be any signs of life from the house.

  Horton climbed out and as he did the sound of the dogs barking came from a distance. She couldn’t be far then. It sounded as though they were on the shore. She was probably down there throwing a ball into the sea for them to fetch. But in this weather? It was sheeting down now but then Thelma Veerman had struck him as the outdoor type. Obviously she couldn’t hear the intercom there. And he hadn’t come all this way to turn back again.

  He tried the gates. They were firmly locked but Horton eyed them up. Calling back to Cantelli he said, ‘I promise I won’t make a dent,’ and swung nimbly on to the bonnet of the car. There was a bar in the gates near the top between the upright wrought-iron prongs. Horton placed his foot on it, tested it, grabbed one of the prongs on the top of the gate, and brought his other foot over, balanced for a spilt second on
the top and then jumped over, dropping with both feet on to the ground the other side in a crouched position.

  ‘Hope you don’t expect me to do that!’ Cantelli exclaimed in horror. ‘I’m an ageing police sergeant, not a paratrooper. I’d like to get my thirty years’ service in and draw my pension.’

  Horton smiled, found a pad to the right of the gate and punched it. The gates began to open. Cantelli drove forward.

  ‘What’s this about ageing?’ Horton teased, climbing in. ‘You’re only a few years older than me.’

  ‘Yes, and I’d like it to stay that way.’

  But Cantelli’s words had triggered something at the back of Horton’s mind that Harry Kimber had said about Bernard joining the police force. How old would Bernard have been when he joined the police? Horton made some quick calculations as Cantelli pulled up in front of the Veermans’ house. Forty-two? But the age limit then for officers joining must have been younger because the earliest retirement age for coppers had been fifty-five and the oldest sixty-five. If he remembered correctly the oldest eligible age for joining the force had been thirty-five so that an officer could get thirty years’ service in order to get a full pension. But perhaps Bernard’s time in the RAF Police had counted. There was more tugging at the back of Horton’s mind but there wasn’t time to think that through now.

  ‘What about the dogs?’ Cantelli asked warily, climbing out of the car.

  ‘They’re Springer Spaniels, not Dobermanns or Bull Mastiffs.’

  Cantelli didn’t look convinced that the breed made any difference to the fact that he might still be attacked. They set off towards the shore at a brisk pace, which was made difficult because the wind was barrelling off the sea and the thin slanting rain driving into them. Surely Thelma Veerman wouldn’t be playing with her dogs on the shore in this weather, Horton thought. He threw Cantelli a puzzled and concerned look.

  ‘They don’t sound very friendly,’ Cantelli said uneasily, picking up something of Horton’s concern.

  Horton agreed. The barking grew louder as they got closer and it seemed to Horton more frantic. His pulse seemed to skip several beats.

  ‘She could have had an accident.’ Or worse, he thought, breaking into a run. Through his mind flashed the awful thought that, distraught at her husband’s affair and possible involvement in Jasper Kenton’s murder, she’d taken her own life. Had Veerman confessed to her, taunted her with it, knowing she would never betray him? What had Gaye just told him? ‘He seems to have attracted a kind of hero worship.’ Did Veerman have the same power over his wife who now, discarded by the hero, had thought her life not worth living? God, he hoped not.

  He reached the shore ahead of Cantelli. The two dogs looked up. They rushed towards him, barking furiously, then raced back along the beach past the boathouse to something lying on the shore. Horton’s heart stalled. He threw Cantelli a worried glance before rushing towards it. The dogs, seeing him coming, stopped barking but didn’t move away from the bundle. As Horton drew nearer they watched him with soulful deep-brown eyes, panting, their tails wagging furiously. Horton’s heart was pounding as his feet struck the shingle. The breath caught in his throat as he drew to a halt. He stared down at the figure of Thelma Veerman on the stones. With a sinking heart and a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach he tested for a pulse in her neck, knowing he wouldn’t find it. He didn’t. He was too late. There was no need to call the paramedics. He called Uckfield instead.

  NINETEEN

  ‘How long?’ Uckfield asked Dr Clayton as she stepped away from the body, which was now covered by a large canvas tent. Brett Veerman had yet to be informed of his wife’s death. Unless he already knew because he’d killed her, thought Horton, although he had no evidence of that.

  ‘Difficult to say in these conditions and with that kind of wound.’ Gaye indicated the crossbow bolt in the chest.

  Horton studied it again for the hundredth time since discovering the body and although his anger had lessened his revulsion was still as strong. There was remarkably little blood around the small wound on the grey T-shirt. She was dressed in casual dark grey trousers, grey socks, sturdy walking shoes and a navy blue zip-up fleece, which was open. There had been nothing in her hands and no sign of the dog lead. The bolt hardly looked powerful or deep enough to have killed and yet of the six and a half inches that Dr Clayton had said was the size of the bolt that had killed Jasper Kenton there was only about two and a half inches protruding from Thelma Veerman’s chest. Kenton had been shot at close range and the same applied to Thelma Veerman. The theory that she might have shot herself had been quickly quashed by the absence of the weapon. Cantelli had made a search of the area but hadn’t found it. It surely had to be the one that had been used to kill Jasper Kenton, and therefore the same killer. Was that the beachcomber? Should he say something now? But he told himself that Thelma Veerman being killed and being found here must mean there was no connection with Lord Eames, except for Brett Veerman. Could he have killed his wife in such a cruel and callous way, letting her bleed to death? Or was his lover the driving force in these murders? Horton only hoped Thelma Veerman’s death had been quicker than Jasper Kenton’s.

  Gaye added, ‘All I can say before I do the autopsy is that rigor mortis appears to be complete. Lividity, as you can see from the blueish colour of the skin, is permanent. I won’t be able to tell if it is all over the body until we get her in the mortuary but if it is then that puts her death approximately sometime between four a.m. and six a.m. But it could be a lot earlier than that. No longer than twenty-four hours certainly.’

  Horton rapidly calculated. Twenty-four hours took them back to yesterday afternoon, sometime between two-thirty and four-thirty. He’d been here then and there had been no sign of Thelma Veerman. Had she been lying on the shore bleeding to death when he’d pressed the intercom and walked away? Could he have saved her life instead of heading to the abbey? But there had been no sound of dogs barking, he recalled, so she must have been alive and elsewhere.

  He brought his full attention back to Gaye. ‘Because she is lying on her back it indicates that she fell the moment she was shot, but with this method of killing, as I explained before, the exact timing of actual death is difficult to ascertain. There is the possibility that she could have staggered about and then fallen, although she would most probably have done so face down.’ She eyed the corpse and frowned as she thought. ‘I suppose she could have turned in a final effort to get up and fetch help. However with dwindling strength I would have said it was more likely she would have got as far as to her knees and then fallen forward.’

  Horton said, ‘Which means if she didn’t die instantly then her body could have been brought here and laid out on the shore.’

  ‘Just like Kenton,’ Uckfield said, scratching the inside of his thigh.

  ‘Yes, only this time without the sail as a shroud,’ Horton answered. He and Cantelli had walked along the shore and it became impassable after several yards in both directions because of rocks and dense woods. So unless she had admitted her killer through the gates of her house she must have met him or her coming ashore by boat. And if the person piloting that boat had been Brett Veerman then the dogs wouldn’t have barked. He said as much, drawing a deep scowl of unease from Uckfield.

  ‘Maybe they were locked up and only managed to get out a few hours ago.’

  ‘But someone must have locked them up.’

  ‘Thelma Veerman might have done.’

  ‘We need to check Veerman’s movements from about two-thirty yesterday afternoon until ten o’clock this morning.’

  But Gaye interjected. ‘He was conducting his out-patients’ clinic this morning and was still there when I got the call to come over. I checked. I thought you might want to know.’ She threw a glance at Horton. He saw Uckfield note it and eye him curiously.

  Horton said, ‘But we don’t know where he was yesterday afternoon, evening and night.’

  Uckfield nodded and asked if they co
uld move the body. Gaye said they could and that she’d conduct the autopsy as soon as it arrived at the mortuary in Newport. With a resigned shrug at Horton she stepped outside. He knew that their dinner date for that night was off. Uckfield followed Gaye out.

  Horton stared down at the body with sorrow. Her face was discoloured and her body drenched from the rain rather than the sea. She’d fallen or had been placed just above the high-water mark so there was no seaweed or sea life attached to it. Had she wanted to tell them her husband was a killer and been silenced because of it? Or had Brett Veerman and his lover conspired to kill her? Had Veerman’s lover alone called at the house and drawn her down to the shore to administer the fatal shot in order to secure the love of Brett Veerman?

  The canvas tent flap opened and Cantelli entered. ‘Is it OK for the undertakers to come in?’

  Horton nodded. Clarke had already taken all the photographs and videos he needed and Taylor had mapped the lie of the land and the location and position of the body. He and his SOCO team would come back inside the tent after the body was removed.

  Horton stepped outside, thankful the rain had finally stopped although he and Cantelli were already wet through. Uckfield had returned to his car where Horton could see him on the phone. Gaye broke off talking to Clarke and crossed to him as the undertakers stepped forward.

  ‘Sorry about tonight. I might finish by eight but you might not. Some other time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He watched her walk away to a waiting police car then turned and stared across the rough muddy grey sea. At least this location, like that of where Kenton’s body had been found, was private property with no nosy neighbours or sightseers to come gawping. And yet maybe if there had been neighbours they might have got a clue as to who had done this. He made for Uckfield who had come off his phone and was climbing out of his car.