‘There are revivals?’ asked Horton.
But Cantelli answered. ‘Yes, and a thriving fan base. My wife was a big fan, still is.’
‘And there are royalties?’ asked Horton.
‘Yes. But I haven’t touched a penny since I left the clinic. And neither have I spent any of the money from the sale of any of my pictures except for those I paint under the name of Joshua Jenkins. The other money is in an account in the name of Mason Petterson.’
‘And it’s still there?’
‘I guess so. I haven’t checked.’
‘Because if you did you knew that Jasper would find you. Why so desperate for him not to locate you?’
Petterson threw Louise a glance. ‘He showed up here in March.’
Horton saw that Petterson had to answer the question in his own way and time.
Louise picked up the tale. ‘Jasper came to the shop. I told him I hadn’t seen Mason since 1987.’
‘He specifically asked about him?’
‘Yes. Jasper must have followed me when I went home.’
Or maybe he didn’t have to because he would already have discovered where Louise lived and all he had to do was mount a surveillance operation. Something Danby had said Kenton wouldn’t be good at, but Horton thought Danby, like everyone else, had underestimated Kenton’s skills, intelligence, cunning and deviousness, not to mention his greed. And Kenton had deliberately fostered that opinion, or any other he wished to assume depending on who he was communicating with. Horton’s mind flicked to Kenton’s performance with the marina manager and salesman at the yacht brokerage.
‘He was friendly and pleasant,’ Petterson resumed. ‘There were no threats. He said he was glad I was OK and pleased I’d got together again with his sister. He said he was also pleased to see how well Louise was doing and that was it. He left.’
‘But you were worried.’
‘Yes. I knew that he wouldn’t go bleating to the media. That wasn’t his style. But everything Jasper did had a purpose and an ulterior motive.’
There was that thread again. ‘Did he steal from the band?’ Horton asked, recalling how Louise had said he’d muscled in on them.
‘He might have done, who the hell knows?’
‘I thought the band had a manager,’ said Cantelli.
‘We did. He got us gigs and made sure we had the right press coverage and the right interviews lined up. Jasper handled the merchandising, royalties and everything else we couldn’t be bothered with including licensing and opening the right investment accounts. None of us questioned it. Jasper was straight. I didn’t question anything until I met Louise again and she told me about her brother. Before we spilt up I’d believed she was jealous of her brother and that she was insecure and unstable.’
‘And I wonder who told you that,’ said Horton knowingly.
‘He even showed me evidence. A computer record at the local mental institution with her name and a record of violence against him and their parents.’
Louise took a breath. Mason Petterson squeezed her hand. ‘I didn’t tell Louise I knew this. I just ditched her.’
‘Didn’t you check it with Stuart Hayes?’ asked Cantelli.
‘No, because Stuart had already told me how much Louise hated her parents. I thought it fitted and I was too wrapped up in the band, too bloody pleased with myself, too damn cocky and too spaced out on drink and drugs. I could have any girl I wanted. They were throwing themselves at me and the others, so why should I stay engaged to a mental case? I thought I’d had a lucky escape. I’d nearly got married to a fruitcake. That’s how it looked to me. Louise went off and that was it.’
‘So why didn’t you think she was a fruitcake when you met her in Wales?’ asked Cantelli.
‘Because by then I’d been classed as one. I thought she would understand what I’d been through. As we talked we realized what Jasper had done. She told me about her suspicions about Jasper siphoning off money from his parents and I began to wonder if he had done that with us. It didn’t matter if he had; there was plenty of the stuff sloshing around. It was the lies and trickery that disgusted me.’
And that was what disgusted Horton about his mother’s disappearance. Sometimes – in fact often – it was the lies you ended up believing because they’d been told so many times they became the truth. He again recalled Bernard’s words: ‘You have to find the truth for yourself. And even then you must ask whether it really is the truth, or what someone is persuading you into believing.’ He hadn’t understood them then, but he did now.
Petterson continued, ‘Louise and I decided that we would leave things in the past and start again. We did for six years before he showed up in March.’
‘So what do you think his purpose was?’
‘I’m not sure. He gave nothing away. Said he was pleased to find I was OK and that was it. He never contacted me or Louise again.’
‘You never tackled him about the lies he told.’
Louise shook her head. Petterson said, ‘We just wanted him out of our lives. We thought about moving and would have done if he’d come round again but he didn’t. Blackmail wasn’t his style. And even if we had moved he’d probably have found us. But he can’t now. You’re sure he is dead? I told Louise she should identify the body just to make certain but she couldn’t cope with it.’
‘We’re sure, Mr Petterson,’ Horton said firmly.
The shop bell buzzed again. Louise Durridge rose. ‘I’d better help out in the shop, if that’s all right?’
‘Of course,’ Horton replied. After she’d left Horton asked Mason Petterson if he was in touch with any of the other band members.
‘No.’
‘Do you know what happened to them?’
‘Stuart Hayes died ten years ago of cancer. Chas Foxton is a millionaire record producer, Gary Grainger some kind of property millionaire and Nigel Swaythling is a big action movie star in Hollywood. I don’t know what happened to Sam Tandy, our lead singer, after he followed a solo career when the band spilt up. He had some success, but then like me the drink and drugs got the better of him. He could be dead for all I know.’
‘And did you tell Jasper this?’
‘No and he didn’t ask.’
So Kenton wouldn’t have got any new information from Petterson. He already knew where Foxton was and what he was doing. And unless he had simply tracked down his sister and her boyfriend to apologize for splitting them up, which he hadn’t, then he’d have left disappointed. Or perhaps not. Petterson was one more name crossed off his list. How many of the others of the group had he visited or contacted?
Horton signalled to Cantelli that the interview was over. As they rose Horton said more as a matter of form than because he thought it pertinent, ‘Where were you both last Thursday night and Friday morning?’
‘At home Thursday night. On Friday, Louise was here in the shop and I was in my studio – well it’s a shed in the garden – painting. We didn’t kill Jasper.’
No, Horton didn’t think they had.
Petterson showed them out of the rear exit. In the car, Cantelli said, ‘So has this anything to do with Kenton and Thelma Veerman’s deaths?’
Good question. It’s what Horton had been thinking. ‘It might do. Kenton was professionally engaged to find out if Veerman was having an affair and that could still be the reason why he was killed, because the affair could not be made public as it would ruin Veerman’s reputation. Alternatively Kenton might have unearthed some kind of drugs scandal that Veerman and an associate are involved in and which could link back to one of the pharmaceutical companies Kenton used to work for. But it also seems clear that Kenton was working on his own private investigation in tracing down members of Gracious Grove and there is a connection between them, Mike Danby and Lord Eames. Foxton is one of Danby’s clients and he uses Eames’ Isle of Wight home for his stars when they’re appearing at the festivals over there. Tell me about Gracious Grove.’
Cantelli started the car and pul
led out into the traffic. ‘Charlotte was mad about them, especially Sam Tandy. They wore these weird clothes.’
‘Didn’t everyone then?’
Cantelli smiled. ‘Dark suits with flouncy white shirts and long flowing cuffs sticking out of the end of their jackets like some seventeenth-century dandy, but their music was good. If you liked that sort of electronic melodic male sound. Catchy tunes. Must have made a fortune. Had hits both sides of the Atlantic and did that film score for Devil Death Threat, the all-action movie that broke all box office records, not to mention that advert for chocolate, amongst others. Good disco music – not for me, I was no disco king,’ Cantelli hastily added. ‘But Charlotte loved dancing. I used to mooch around the best I could. Charlotte will go into a swoon when I tell her I’ve met Mason Petterson. Why would Kenton want to make contact with them if he siphoned off money from their accounts?’ Cantelli headed out of Marlborough along the top road across Savernake Forest.
‘Maybe to check they hadn’t discovered it.’ But there was more to Kenton the computer and IT security expert.
‘He sounds like a nasty piece of work to do that to his sister,’ said Cantelli.
‘And I think he’s done more than that over the years to others. Oh, not the same lies but the same method. Planting false information to get whatever he wanted, such as promotion over a colleague who was more suitable for the position than him until something emerged about this colleague and he or she was sidelined; getting someone the sack and then stepping into their shoes. If Trueman delves deep into Kenton’s employment record that’s what he’ll find.’
Horton recalled what Danby had told him about the health-care company Kenton had worked for and how Kenton had unearthed a major cyber crime which had earned him an unequalled reputation and promotion as well as probably money, because Horton wouldn’t mind betting that the whole thing was a scam to make him look good and to cream off money. Kenton used others to get what he wanted and he was patient and thorough. If he had singled out Eunice Swallows to work with her, why? Because she had clients he wanted to get into? And why pick Mike Danby for referrals for close protection work? Because Kenton had wanted access to Chas Foxton? Horton explained his thinking to Cantelli and then reached for his mobile phone. He called Danby.
‘I need to speak to Chas Foxton,’ Horton said when Danby came on the line.
‘Why?’ Danby asked, surprised. Then he swiftly answered his own question with another. ‘Is it connected with Jasper Kenton?’
Had Danby known all the time? Or was it just an educated guess? For a copper the latter wouldn’t have been such a mental leap especially as Danby knew what Horton was investigating. ‘Yes, but possibly not his death. I have an idea that Kenton was tracing members of the band that he once used to work for.’
There was a small silence at the other end of the line before Danby replied, ‘I didn’t know that.’
It could be a bluff but Horton didn’t think so. ‘Did he ever pump you for information on Chas Foxton?’
‘No. But I also work for another member of the band, Gary Grainger. And before you ask me, Kenton never pumped me for information on him either.’
Perhaps he didn’t need to if he’d accessed Danby’s computers.
Danby said, ‘Gary’s in the West Indies so you can’t speak to him and Chas is flying out to Switzerland today but I’ll see if I can get hold of him. I’ll call you back.’
Horton relayed the information to Cantelli and then, accessing the Internet on his mobile phone, he keyed in the name of the band and was soon logged on to the official website of Gracious Grove. He read how the band had been performing gigs for some time at the places that mattered in the 1980s, the Blitz in London and the London Scala Cinema, but it was their appearance on London Weekend Television that catapulted the working-class lads from Swindon to fame.
‘There’s some photos of them as they were and recently,’ he said to Cantelli. ‘Gary Grainger looks very affluent and he’s put on a bit of weight but not as much as Chas Foxton. I’m not sure Charlotte would fancy either of them now. She might still go for Nigel Swaythling though. No, you keep your eyes on the road. Very distinguished looking, slim and photogenic. I remember him now. I’ve seen him in a couple of action movies. I didn’t make the connection between him and the band. There’s an obit. on Stuart Hayes and the only picture they have of Mason Petterson was taken at one of his art exhibitions before his breakdown.’ And Petterson didn’t look too pleased at being at the bash.
‘There are some of his paintings, not the sort of thing you’d hang on your living-room wall unless you want to be permanently depressed,’ he said, scrolling through the dark brooding images that looked like blobs of black paint on a canvas, which reminded Horton of Walters and his search for the paint vandal.
Horton turned his gaze on Sam Tandy. Just as Petterson had told them Sam had launched a solo career after the group had broken up, but the blurb said he’d never repeated the same level of success. In the mid-1990s he’d dropped off the radar altogether. Horton rang Trueman and asked him to check the databases for the whereabouts of Sam Tandy, former member of Gracious Grove.
‘You starting a fan club?’
‘They’ve already got one.’ Swiftly he brought Trueman up to speed with their interview with Louise Durridge and Mason Petterson. ‘Have you tracked down any fans of Brett Veerman?’
‘Half the hospital staff by the sounds of it, according to Marsden. Dennings hasn’t found anything incriminating at Veerman’s Isle of Wight property or in the boathouse but samples have been taken from the latter and the cars. Eunice Swallows has given me the link to Kenton’s reports on Brett Veerman, which I’ve read, but they’re cursory to say the least and make no mention of his searches on the Internet for newspaper reports, photographs, articles or papers presented at conferences, or any mention of anyone who appears regularly with him. The Hi-Tech Unit are doing their own searches. If we had Kenton’s computer we’d be able to interrogate that.’
And that was precisely why they didn’t have it. The killer had taken it. Horton would need to talk to Uckfield about conducting a deep investigation into the two pharmaceutical companies where Kenton had been employed to see if they could uncover fraud and in order to do that Horton knew they would need the assistance of the International Fraud Intelligence Bureau, City of London Police.
He said, ‘See if you can establish the whereabouts of Nigel Swaythling.’
‘The actor?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know exactly where he is. He’s in Budapest shooting the next Garth Johnson film. I read about it this morning in the newspaper.’
Was he there last Thursday, though? Horton thought he probably was. He rang off and almost instantly his phone rang. It was Danby.
‘If you want to talk to Chas Foxton you’d better get a move on. He’ll stop off at my boat at Hamble Marina on the way to the airport.’
‘That’s a roundabout way to get to Switzerland if he’s flying from London.’
‘He’s going from Southampton and, before you ask, he’s flying by private jet.’
All right for some, thought Horton. ‘We’ll be there in forty minutes.’ To Cantelli he said, ‘Better get your autograph book ready. We’re going to interview Chas Foxton.’
TWENTY-THREE
‘We felt sorry for him,’ Chas Foxton said, eyeing Horton and Cantelli in the main cabin of Danby’s motor cruiser. Foxton had piled on even more weight since the photograph Horton had seen on the website. His face was so fleshy that it made the eyes that girls had once swooned over look small and mean. And although his causal clothes – tan suede jacket and loose-fitting pale blue shirt – were expensive, no amount of money spent on good tailoring could disguise the enormous protruding waistline. Horton wondered if Cantelli was shocked or disappointed. If he was he didn’t show it and neither did he display signs of unease at being on the water, albeit in the relative calm of the marina.
‘Why sorry?’ asked Ho
rton, keenly interested.
‘He was just one of those guys you thought weak and pathetic. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Always wanting to please people.’
Yet another view of Jasper Kenton which conflicted with Louise Durridge’s and the marina staff. Although that could simply be Chas Foxton’s interpretation of anyone who quietly and painstakingly got on with their work, never seeking praise or crowing about what they had achieved.
‘Always had his head stuck in a computer. Bit of a geek even back then before they became fashionable,’ Foxton added.
‘He seemed to have done all right for himself, before he got killed,’ Horton answered a little tersely. He knew Danby would have told Foxton that the police were treating Kenton’s death as suspicious – hence their wanting to interview him – but how much more he’d said he didn’t know.
‘Yeah, that surprised me. People like Jasper don’t get themselves killed.’
Don’t you believe it, thought Horton. ‘People like what?’ he probed in a neutral voice, disguising his dislike of the self-centred, arrogant man in front of him. He could see Danby eyeing him with a secret smile. The ex-detective knew exactly how he felt.
‘Jasper was kind of nondescript. You didn’t notice him even if he was there.’
Cantelli looked up from his notebook. ‘He could have changed since those days. The 1980s were a long time ago.’
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