A Killing Coast (15 page)

TEN

U
ckfield rammed his hands into the pockets of his big camel-haired coat and hunched his neck into his collar against what had now become a chill drizzling rain sweeping off a grey dismal sea. It seemed to Horton more invasive than the angry rain that had already soaked through his clothes and frozen his bones, despite the sailing waterproofs. A farmer had loaned his tractor and a driver, who was finally hauling the car on to the shore. While Horton had waited for Uckfield to arrive he’d taken a call from Cantelli who’d said there was no answer from Hazleton. Horton told him to keep trying.

A quick survey of the area had shown Horton that Lisle could have driven off the road along the farm track and down on to the beach and into the sea. But then why wasn’t he in the driving seat, wondered Horton, studying the old Morris Minor, as Jim Clarke stepped forward and began photographing it. It was empty.

‘Lisle must have done a runner,’ growled Uckfield.

‘And ditch his beloved car?’ Horton replied, surprised. It seemed out of character but then he didn’t really know much about the man.

‘Maybe it wasn’t so beloved,’ said Uckfield. ‘And it contained evidence of Yately’s murder, which Lisle was hoping the sea would cover up.’

‘How did he get away from here after ditching it?’

‘How the blazes do I know?’ Uckfield snapped. ‘Maybe he swam.’

Or maybe he had an accomplice who picked him up by car or boat, thought Horton, but didn’t bother saying so with Uckfield in the mood he was. Horton suspected that Dean was breathing down his neck, pressing for results and still refusing to budge on providing more manpower.

‘I suppose he could have ditched it and then walked out into the sea to take his own life,’ suggested Horton.

Uckfield brightened at that. ‘Feeling guilt ridden after killing Yately. And feeling he had nothing else left to live for with his wife dead, a wife who had deceived and betrayed him.’

‘We don’t know that for certain,’ said Horton, adding to himself: and a son living the other side of the world and a daughter who barely saw him. It was possible. He held his breath as Clarke nodded that he’d finished and Taylor carefully eased open the driver’s door, making sure to stay well clear of any water cascading out. Beth Tremain did the same with the passenger door.

‘No one inside,’ Taylor announced.

Horton exhaled, thinking Lisle
must
have killed himself. He watched as Taylor removed the keys from the ignition and placed them into a small evidence bag while Beth Tremain examined the small front compartment on the passenger side.

‘The usual car documents by the look of it, sir,’ she said addressing Uckfield. ‘Though there’s not much left of them except pulp.’

Horton stepped forward and surveyed the interior. ‘No sign of a laptop computer.’ It wouldn’t be any use if there had been one. But Lisle would hardly walk into the sea carrying it. Horton guessed he could have smashed it up and dumped it elsewhere.

They moved around to the rear. Uckfield nodded at Taylor to join them. Extracting a key from the evidence bag, Taylor carefully inserted it into the boot. It opened just a fraction with a small click.

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Uckfield, stepping back, holding a hand over his nose as an evil stench wafted out to them.

Horton shivered as the suspicion of what might be causing the smell came to him. Perhaps Lisle hadn’t walked into the sea and drowned. Perhaps he hadn’t been collected by an accomplice. Perhaps his body was in the boot of the car and if it was then he certainly wasn’t their killer.

He steeled himself for what he might be about to see and, with his heart racing, he watched Taylor prise open the boot. The breath caught in his throat and his stomach heaved as he stared down at the filthy sodden body furled into the small boot. DC Marsden retched and staggered away and Horton heard him being sick. Taylor gulped and blinked hard several times while Clarke stepped forward and began clicking away with his camera as though taking holiday snaps. But then Clarke, like them all, had seen some repulsive and heart-wrenching sights and each dealt with it in his or her own way. The tractor driver hesitated, undecided whether to jump down from his cab and take a look, clearly torn between curiosity and fear, before Horton said, ‘I wouldn’t if I was you, sir.’

‘Who the devil is that?’ Uckfield exclaimed, taking a big white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and making a show of wiping his nose.

Horton forced himself to study the corpse, which was curled up in the foetal position. It certainly wasn’t Lisle. The skin was purple and the sea life had managed to penetrate the ill-fitting boot of the car. They were crawling over the corpse, but from what Horton could see they hadn’t feasted too much on the soft flesh of the face, which bore out what Horton had already surmised, and from what they knew about the last sighting of Lisle’s car on Tuesday morning, this body hadn’t been in the sea for long. He took in the beige trousers, the sodden cardigan and the slight figure. There was something very familiar about it, but the yellow-and-blue spotted cravat tied at the neck confirmed his worse suspicions.

His heart sank while his mind tried to make some sense of what he was seeing. Silently he cursed, before solemnly announcing, ‘It’s Victor Hazleton.’

‘Who?’ cried Uckfield, swivelling to glare at Horton.

‘He’s an elderly man who reported seeing a mysterious light at sea just off the coast of St Lawrence on Wednesday night and again last night.’

‘And you didn’t think to tell me that?’ cried Uckfield, glaring at Horton.

Horton took a breath. ‘I didn’t consider it connected with the case.’ But he had, at least twice, and he’d almost mentioned it except for the fact that he, like everyone else, had thought Hazleton had been attention seeking. Well, now the poor little man was centre stage and he wouldn’t be making any more reports of smugglers and illegal immigrants.

Uckfield glowered at him. ‘This is the second cock-up you’ve made, Inspector. A killer is walking around free because you failed to seal off the first victim’s flat and now another man has lost his life.’

Horton’s fists balled. His jaw tightened with anger but it was directed at himself and not Uckfield. He knew that even if he had told Uckfield about Victor Hazleton, Uckfield would have thought it irrelevant but that wasn’t the point. He’d taken his eye off the ball. His mind was too far back in the past; a past that was rapidly becoming an obsession and that could never be changed, whereas his present and the future could be, and that was what he should have been damn well thinking about: the job, not some bloody ancient conspiracy theory.

‘So what else haven’t you told me?’ Uckfield sneered.

Tersely Horton reported, ‘Hazleton telephoned me at twenty-one thirty-five to report seeing a light off the coast and left a message on my voicemail. I came here to interview him and to see if I could establish where this light might have been heading.’

‘So Hazleton must have seen Yately’s killer last Wednesday,’ Uckfield snapped. ‘And last night, when he saw the light again he went to investigate and got himself killed as a result. And that killer is Lisle. He used his boat last Wednesday to either rendezvous with Yately or to get away after leaving his body on the coast.’

‘But he couldn’t have used it last night because . . .’ Horton stalled, before quickly adding, ‘Was anyone watching Lisle’s boat?’ He saw immediately by Uckfield’s expression that they hadn’t been. ‘Lisle could have removed the tarpaulin, taken the boat out and brought it back on the high tide.’

‘Marsden,’ Uckfield bellowed. Marsden returned looking shamefaced, but no one was going to admonish him for throwing up. ‘Get someone to check if the tarpaulin on Lisle’s boat’s been tampered with.’

Horton felt like saying touché, but didn’t. It was an oversight on Uckfield’s part but the big man was never going to thank him for pointing it out. And it was a minor victory which didn’t assuage his guilt over Hazleton’s death. Even if Lisle had used his boat there were still several points that didn’t add up. He said, ‘If Lisle used his boat to rendezvous with Yately somewhere along the coast near Hazleton’s house and then drove his car out here, how did he get back to his boat? It’s a considerable distance to walk and there’s no public transport at that time of night.’

‘He got a lift and that means someone will remember seeing him,’ Uckfield said brusquely.

‘And the dress found on Yately?’

‘Yately had an affair with Lisle’s wife and Lisle wanted revenge, and he was sick enough to put one of his wife’s dresses on the body. Hazleton saw Lisle kill Yately so he too had to die.’

‘But why put Hazleton in the boot of the car? Why not take his body out to sea and dump it?’ insisted Horton.

‘To cover up the evidence,’ Uckfield declared with immovable certainty.

Horton wasn’t sure, but Uckfield’s theory seemed far more probable than his of both men indulging in cross-dressing and being discovered by smugglers.

Uckfield was reaching for his mobile phone. Horton heard him tell Dennings to look for photographs of Abigail Lisle in the house. They might be able to match the dress worn by Yately. They’d have to show the photograph of the dress to Rachel Salter, and Horton didn’t envy the person who had that task.

He took another look at Victor Hazleton. He hoped the poor man hadn’t been alive when he’d been locked in the boot and left there to die with the sea seeping in to drown him, terrified and panic stricken. But if Hazleton’s killer was the same person who had tormented and killed Colin Yately then he was very much afraid he might have been. And was that vindictive evil killer Arthur Lisle? Horton would want to know a great deal more about the man before he could answer that question.

Sergeant Norris crossed to Horton. ‘The farmer claims he heard nothing out of the ordinary last night or this morning and the residents in the two nearest houses didn’t hear or see anything unusual.’ The sergeant’s eyes strayed towards the boot of the car.

‘Did you know Victor Hazleton, the victim?’ Horton asked.

Norris shook his head. ‘I don’t recognize the name.’

Coming off the phone, Uckfield turned to Marsden and said crisply. ‘I want you to set up a temporary incident room at Ventnor working closely with Sergeant Norris. Norris, I want Hazleton’s house sealed off immediately. Also get hold of the police doctor and get him over here before the ghouls come out in force. Yeah, I know the poor bugger’s dead but we still need the doctor to tell us the bleeding obvious.’ Norris nodded and hurried to his car parked above the bay. To Marsden, Uckfield added, ‘I want an all-ports alert put out for Arthur Lisle; liaise with Sergeant Trueman on that.’ Marsden shot off to join Norris. To Horton, he said ‘Does Hazleton have any relatives?’

‘Not sure. He has a cleaner and gardener.’

‘OK, we’ll call at his house, and we need all the information we can get on him.’ Uckfield again reached for his mobile phone, this time obviously to tell Trueman to start researching Victor Hazleton’s background, when Horton forestalled him. ‘Cantelli’s already started on that.’

Uckfield said, ‘Then he can carry on working on it with Trueman.’

Horton wasn’t sure what Bliss would think of that but that was Uckfield’s problem, not his. He wondered how much, if anything, Cantelli and Walters had managed to check out on Russell Glenn and his yacht crew, or whether Cantelli had had much joy researching cross-dressing conventions, something he still hadn’t mentioned to Uckfield and wouldn’t, not now. It didn’t seem relevant. Horton wondered if he should drop his research on Glenn. They probably wouldn’t have time for it anyway. And perhaps he should do the same with Adrian Stanley. He should let the past go.

With Uckfield on the phone, Horton turned his back on the sea in an attempt to find some relief from the penetrating rain and rang Cantelli, telling him why he couldn’t get an answer from Hazleton’s phone and that Uckfield wanted him to work closely with Trueman on Hazleton’s background. Cantelli said he’d found nothing on cross-dressing conventions. ‘I could check with Vice,’ he added.

Horton told him to forget it. He then rang Bliss and swiftly brought her up to date, expecting a similar bollocking to the one Uckfield had given him, for slipping up, but Bliss was more concerned whether Hazleton’s death was connected with Project Neptune.

‘Superintendent Uckfield doesn’t believe so,’ he said, and he told her Uckfield’s theory.

‘I’ll have to report it to Detective Chief Superintendent Sawyer,’ Bliss said. ‘Keep me fully briefed, Inspector.’ She rang off.

Horton crossed to the Morris Minor and addressed Taylor. ‘Is there anything in his pockets?’

Tentatively, Taylor reached towards the body and eased his slim hands inside the trouser pockets. He extracted a set of keys, which he dropped into an evidence bag and handed to Horton. There were five, two of them the large old-fashioned sort. Horton then telephoned Dr Clayton. ‘Anything more on Yately?’ he enquired.

‘I’m still waiting for the results of the tests.’

He asked her whether Yately’s body had revealed any homosexual tendencies and got a firm ‘no’. He then told her about Hazleton’s death, adding, ‘When can you come over and do the autopsy?’

‘Early tomorrow morning. I’ll arrange it with the hospital mortuary.’

‘Thanks.’ He told her that the police launch would bring her over and a car would collect her from Cowes Marina and take her to the mortuary in Newport. He called Elkins who was waiting offshore in the police launch and briefed him about the discovery, giving him instructions to return to the mainland. He’d go back with Uckfield, and he asked Elkins to collect Dr Clayton from the port in the morning.

The Island police doctor arrived twenty minutes later. He could tell them little about how Hazleton had died, possibly a blow to the head, and that he’d been dead for approximately thirteen hours, maybe less, maybe more, which meant that Hazleton must have been killed shortly after making that call to him at twenty-one thirty-five.

They stayed until the body was removed, watching it from the comfort and warmth of Uckfield’s BMW, by which time Taylor and his team had left for Hazleton’s house and a member of the press had arrived. Uckfield adroitly fended off questions from him with an ‘it’s too early to comment’ remark. Horton had asked one of the local officers to organize the Morris Minor to be taken to the station garage in Newport for further forensic examination and to stay with it until it safely arrived. Then, giving directions to Uckfield, they headed back along the coast road to Hazleton’s place. Uckfield relayed what Trueman had managed to get on Arthur Lisle.