Shroud of Evil

by Pauline Rowson

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Jasper Kenton traced you, not Sam Tandy,’ Horton said, eyeing Antony Dormand closely, trying desperately to make sense of what he was seeing. Dormand looked so different out of the black habit that Horton could hardly believe it was Brother Norman. The casual dark trousers, black high-neck jumper and black waterproof jacket made him appear taller and fitter and the beginnings of a close-cropped beard and the absence of the cowl around his face showed more of the resemblance to the young man with the beard in the photograph from 1967. There was no meek stoop about him now. How long had Dormand been a monk here? What had brought him here? Was he in fact really a monk or just masquerading as one? So many questions assailed Horton that they made his head ache. It was difficult to know where to start.

  ‘I doubt that, Inspector Horton. Even you couldn’t trace me without a little help and I wasn’t sure you were going to work it out in time.’

  Time for what? Before Dormand made his escape, Horton guessed, judging by the boat beside him. ‘The ring, you mean.’ Horton’s eyes fell on it. ‘You weren’t wearing it when I first came here.’

  ‘No. Hands are so important, don’t you think? They don’t lie.’

  Horton studied Dormand carefully. He caught a hidden meaning behind his words which registered in his teeming brain but which he quickly filed away to be analysed and dealt with later.

  ‘You knew I had the photograph.’ Horton tried to keep his voice steady although his heart was pounding. ‘Otherwise there would have been no point in you putting on the ring when I came to tell you about the sentencing of the two thieves.’ In that photograph from 1967 Dormand had his hand draped over Rory Mortimer’s shoulder and he’d been wearing a ring. Horton remembered how Dormand had held up his hand refusing the offer of a drink, and how he had seen in Dormand’s face something that had jarred with him. He’d also sensed a subdued energy in the monk’s lean body and seen something deep and dark in his eyes that had reminded him of the beachcomber, Lomas, and which he’d considered had reflected an accumulation of life’s experiences. He wondered what Dormand’s life had held before he’d ended up here.

  ‘Did Richard Eames tell you I had the photograph?’ Horton asked. Or had it been Ballard? There was also Professor Thurstan Madeley who had pulled together the archive project on the sit-in protest of 1967 but who had omitted to include the photograph Ballard had left Horton on his boat. Madeley had pointed Horton towards Dr Quentin Amos, who could also have made contact with Dormand. When Dormand didn’t answer, Horton continued. ‘Did you put Jasper Kenton’s body on Richard Eames’ property?’

  Dormand’s lips twitched in the ghost of smile and behind the cool blue eyes Horton registered a steeliness he hadn’t seen before and which sent a cold shiver down his spine.

  Eames must have picked up Dormand’s activities from his security sensors. It would have been dark then but Eames’ security probably had infrared sensors. Eames must have believed that Kenton had unearthed Brother Norman’s true identity and been killed because of it, which was why he’d ordered the softly-softly approach to the investigation and let him believe Brett Veerman could be involved in order to protect Dormand and his new identity. But if Eames and Dormand were working in cohort then why would Dormand dump the body there? Why not dump it miles away and make sure it sank to the bottom of the sea? Because Eames had no idea of Dormand’s new ID and Dormand wanted Eames to know where he was. But if that was the case then why hadn’t Eames sent someone to deal with Dormand? Maybe he had, Horton thought with a shiver. The beachcomber, Lomas. Only Dormand had dealt with him first.

  Lomas and Eames had been on the trail of Antony Dormand and Dormand had discovered this. Lomas had been living in one of those stone buildings close to Eames’ house, which Horton had inspected and found remarkably empty, too empty. So maybe he hadn’t been there but inside Eames’ house. Lomas had seen Horton approach on Friday and make for the woods. All Lomas had to do was head through the rear of Eames’ property, let himself out the back entrance, jump down from the pontoon and hide around the side of the creek until he was ready to make his encounter with him. Lomas already knew who he was. Eames would have told him.

  Lomas had then returned to the house and had been inside it when Uckfield had sent Danby inside to check nothing had been stolen. Danby was probably oblivious to his presence. Was Lomas still there or had he made off after the discovery of Kenton’s body on the shore under Eames’ instructions? Or had Dormand killed him? Perhaps Lomas had been here to flush out the man everyone seemed to be looking for – Antony Dormand.

  Horton eyed Dormand coldly and with anger churning his gut. Was this the man who had killed Jennifer and had condemned him to a lonely and cruel childhood? His fists clenched and his body stiffened. Or had Lomas been working independently? Was Lomas the man that Eames and his cronies wanted Horton to flush out? And who Dormand was after? Was Lomas his mother’s killer?

  Horton still couldn’t make sense of it all. He needed answers to the multitude of questions swimming round in his head. ‘Did you know I was on that shore the Friday before you dumped Kenton’s body there?’

  Dormand said nothing, which indicated to Horton that he did. And if Eames hadn’t told him directly then either Lomas had done so and had come here after seeing him on the shore or Dormand had managed to hack into Eames’ security system.

  ‘The beachcomber I saw on the shore on Friday, who is he, Dormand? Is it Rory Mortimer? The sixth man in the photograph?’

  ‘No, he’s dead.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I killed him.’

  Horton was taken aback.

  ‘Under orders, of course.’ Dormand seemed completely unperturbed. ‘Mortimer was a traitor, as were Royston and Wilson, selling secrets to the Russians.’

  ‘You killed them too!’ Horton cried, unable to believe what he was hearing, but afraid it was the truth. ‘And Zachary Benham? Was he selling secrets?’

  ‘No, he was trying to unearth them and died doing so.’

  ‘In a psychiatric hospital. What was he doing there?’

  ‘We don’t know. I suspect someone would like to find out.’

  Horton felt confused and angry. ‘But all that was years ago,’ he insisted. ‘It’s history and the Cold War is over.’ But he remembered Quentin Amos’s words about it never being over, not as far as terrorism was concerned, and Horton knew that all too well.

  ‘There are other threats,’ Dormand answered, echoing Horton’s thoughts. ‘Some more dangerous and deadlier than we have ever faced in our history. It can start in a very small way and if not contained, if information is not gathered, analysed and imparted in the right quarters, and certain parties eliminated, it can escalate out of all control.’

  Horton thought of the hate crime of the paint sprawled on restaurant walls. It had been trivial, carried out by someone who just wanted to earn a quick and crooked buck. But it could have been deadly serious.

  Dormand continued. ‘It can end in bloody carnage and the slaughter of innocent people. Cast your mind back to 1978, when Jennifer disappeared, what was happening then? If you don’t know then read it up and you’ll soon see what Jennifer was involved with.’

  But Horton already knew. Harry Kimber had given him that information: ‘November 1978 … it was before those terrible bombs were set off by the IRA in towns and villages across Northern Ireland … and then all those bombs in December in Bristol, Coventry, Liverpool, Manchester, and just up the road in Southampton. The IRA said they were gearing up for a long war.’ It was the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

  ‘You’re saying that Jennifer had intelligence on the IRA?’

  ‘It’s a dirty business, Inspector, as you no doubt know or are finding out.’

  ‘And my mother was involved in this dirty business in 1967. She’d been working for the intelligence services, feeding information to them on the members of the Radical Student Alliance.’

  Horton recal
led what he’d read. There had been the mass anti-Vietnam War rally in Grosvenor Square in 1968, the violent student protests at the London School of Economics in 1969, a British Minister’s home had been bombed in 1971 and there was a massive expulsion of Soviet spies in 1971. And if Jennifer had been in some way linked to the troubles in Northern Ireland then Horton recollected the horrific bombing of Aldershot Barracks in 1972 that had killed six people and the bombs that were set off in Manchester City, Victoria Station, Kings Cross and Oxford Street in 1973. And in 1973 Jennifer had left London with her small son.

  Horton said, ‘So you’d had enough. Is that why you came here, to escape? To hide,’ he goaded.

  ‘An intelligence agent can never hide.’

  Horton narrowed his eyes. ‘You mean Jennifer couldn’t hide even when she fled London with me and tried to start a new life in Portsmouth with nothing and knowing no one. Who was she running away from?’

  ‘I think you might need to rephrase that.’

  Horton froze. He felt sickened. This was incredible. It couldn’t be true and yet if he pieced together the fragments of information and facts he’d discovered over the last year he knew it could be. It completely turned on its head all his thoughts and preconceptions and memories of his mother. ‘Who was she running to?’

  ‘Or for. That is something we’d all like to know.’

  Horton eyed him keenly, looking for the lie, but he saw none. ‘And is that who I am supposed to find and lead Lord Eames and his colleagues to?’ Pictures flashed through Horton’s mind: the wealthy man with the big car, the man with the boat. Had the latter been Edward Ballard? Had they both been Edward Ballard? Then he considered what he’d discovered about Eileen and Bernard. Eileen had worked for the civil service in Northern Ireland during the troubles; she’d left there and come to Portsmouth when Bernard had been shot and injured. The code that Amos had bequeathed to him, which could be the location reference for the Royal Navy hospital at Gosport where Bernard had been taken and where Horton now believed Jennifer had been heading the day she disappeared. To rendezvous with Eileen. To give her information about the IRA or to assist the IRA.

  His head was spinning. He said, ‘We never had any money and my mother had to work as a croupier in a casino and leave me to fend for myself at nights. There was no one she was in the pay of.’ He eyed Dormand closely. What could he see in that expression? ‘Don’t tell me all that was a cover!’ he cried, astounded. My God it couldn’t be! He recalled the damp, smelly, crowded terraced houses in Portsmouth where he’d lived with his mother before they had been rehoused in the tower block. ‘You think this person she was reporting to killed her?’ And he was certain that couldn’t have been Eileen Litchfield. Dormand didn’t reply. ‘She went to meet him on that day in November. Who is he?’

  ‘That is something we’d all like to know.’

  And had Dormand been hoping to find him here? Had he thought he’d found him in Lomas and had been deceived? Had Eames thought he’d found him in Dormand and realized he was wrong?

  ‘Why? It happened years ago.’ But maybe Horton understood. Swiftly he answered his own question. ‘Because he has highly damaging information about you and Richard Eames?’

  ‘And others.’

  Horton exhaled. Nothing he remembered was how it seemed. He didn’t know any longer which memories he could trust.

  ‘Is that why you’re leaving – because this man is not here, because your cover is blown or because you killed Lomas?’ Horton wasn’t sure of that but it was possible. Whoever Lomas had been working for, Eames had been keen to keep his presence quiet. Dormand was eyeing him evenly but his expression didn’t betray his thoughts.

  Horton continued. ‘You didn’t kill Jasper Kenton though. You just moved his body.’ Dormand had placed it on Eames’ shore in the early hours of Saturday morning not because he wanted to draw Horton to the abbey – Horton had already been here several times in connection with the recovery of stolen goods – but as a message to Eames that he had killed Lomas and was prepared to continue to kill rather than be exposed or be killed.

  Horton took a breath. ‘Who took that photograph from 1967?’ he asked.

  ‘Jennifer.’

  Eames had denied she had but then Eames was a liar, as might Dormand be. These men lied whenever it suited them. But if it was true then had Jennifer given the picture to Edward Ballard or had the picture been found in their flat after Jennifer had disappeared? By whom though? Someone working for the Intelligence Services or someone responsible for killing Jennifer? How had it ended up with Ballard? Had Ballard been her contact in London or Portsmouth? Had he discovered that Jennifer had been betrayed or had betrayed them but that she’d left behind a child – him? When Ballard discovered what had happened to her he had taken him from the children’s home and placed him with Eileen and Bernard Litchfield.

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘I would say most certainly, wouldn’t you?’

  He would. But so too were Jasper Kenton and Thelma Veerman. He might not be able to do anything about Lomas but he could about Kenton and Thelma Veerman. His weary brain picked up what Dormand had said earlier: ‘Hands are so important, don’t you think? They don’t lie.’ The monks often kept their hands hidden in their sleeves – not so easy for others – but which of them was it: Jay Ottley, who always wore gloves, or Cliff Yately, who had sprained his wrist and had his hand bandaged and his arm in a sling? But it wasn’t only hands that didn’t lie; it could also be the shape of the face and much of a face could be hidden behind a beard as Dormand’s had been in that old photograph.

  ‘Where’s Jay? Or should I say Sam Tandy?’

  Again Dormand remained silent.

  Horton continued. ‘Kenton wanted Jay Ottley’s money, or rather the royalties that have been accruing in Sam Tandy’s account for years. Kenton had located the account but hadn’t got access to it. In return for keeping quiet about Jay’s new life, Kenton said he would leave Jay in peace. So what disfigurement does Jay Ottley have on his hands that Thelma Veerman had seen?’

  ‘His left hand. An accident when he was in his late teens left a permanent weakness and a scar.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, with a pistol crossbow.’

  Dormand inclined his head in acknowledgement.

  Horton continued. ‘Kenton tracked Tandy to the abbey but he needed Thelma Veerman to identify him. He wormed his way into her lonely empty life, having discovered that she provided nursing care. Did Thelma see Tandy kill Kenton? Is that why he had to kill her?’

  ‘That was a shame. Thelma was innocent but Kenton was a crook and blackmailer. If Jay had left it to me I would have seen to it and no one would have been any the wiser.’

  Horton believed that. ‘You removed Kenton’s clothes, wrapped him in an old sail cloth and took him to Eames’ land in the early hours of Saturday morning after which you returned to the abbey and drove Kenton’s car to the Fishbourne ferry terminal for the four a.m. sailing to Portsmouth. You bought a ticket in the name of Adam Rooney. Kenton had a return ticket in his wallet under a false name and false registration number so that he couldn’t be traced after Sam Tandy had signed over his millions to him. In the rear of Kenton’s car you found a camera and video along with a laptop computer and phone, all of which contained information on his investigation into Brett Veerman. You decided to leave the car where Veerman had a flat. You wiped the car clean, of course.’ And Dormand would have been an expert at that.

  ‘And did you find Thelma’s body here on Tuesday afternoon, after she’d met Jay?’ Did he drug her dogs? Yes, he must have done, probably with some medication he had got from the vet for his sick pig. ‘On Wednesday afternoon or morning you took her back to her house by that boat with her dogs and left her there.’

  ‘Just tidying up as I’ve been trained to do.’

  ‘Why didn’t Jay Ottley just sign over the money? He didn’t need it. Two people would be alive today if he had done so.’

  ‘He thought
Kenton had come here to take him away. Jay could never leave. Too much LSD had left him with hallucinations, one of which was that if he stepped outside the abbey demons from hell would come after him and eat him alive.’

  ‘He’ll have to leave now when I charge him with double murder. He’ll get treatment.’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  Dormand’s words sent a chill through Horton. ‘Where is he? Where’s Sam Tandy?’ he asked, fearing the worse.

  Dormand glanced beyond Horton to the boathouse. He turned. His blood ran cold. ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘Perhaps by now he is. When you asked at the café where you could find me, Jay thought you’d come to take him away.’

  That confirmed to Horton that there was another way through the abbey gardens to the shore and a much quicker route than the one he’d taken. Could he trust Dormand to be telling the truth though? Was he just saying that to divert him so that he could make his escape on the boat, which was clearly his intention?

  ‘Did you kill him?’ Horton tossed a concerned glance at the boathouse.

  ‘No. He killed himself. With his pistol crossbow which he kept here.’

  Horton again looked back at the boathouse.

  ‘You have a choice, Andy Horton. Either stop me from leaving or try and save Sam Tandy’s life.’

  Horton studied Dormand evenly for a few seconds, then turned and ran to the boathouse. He pushed open the door and saw the recumbent body of Jay Ottley stretched out amongst the lines, sails, oars, life jackets and rusting bits of boat. Ottley’s eyes were wide open and even in death he looked haunted. Swiftly Horton checked for a pulse, knowing he wouldn’t find one. Ottley had made sure of that. The bolt from the pistol crossbow was embedded in the right side of the head and the weapon was lying close to Ottley’s right gloveless hand. The scar from his accident years ago was visible in the palm of the left hand.

  The sound of a boat’s small engine alerted Horton. He raced out and peered into the black night and could just make out the dark shape of Dormand in the dinghy heading out into the Solent. Dormand raised his hand in farewell. Horton stepped forward, but what could he do except call the coastguard?