Deadly Waters (28 page)

Woodford looked distracted for a moment before she pulled herself together and said, ‘It was eight twenty. I glanced at my watch and said I won’t be long. I didn’t know then that I would never see her alive again.’ She shuddered and buried her chin lower into her jacket as if cold.

If she was telling the truth then she had an alibi for the night Langley was killed, and she couldn’t have taken the body to the mulberry. She couldn’t have killed Jessica Langley before the call-out because Dr Clayton said that Langley’s death had occurred between nine and eleven p.m. Was Dr Clayton mistaken? Was yet another of his theories about to go up in smoke? He felt the bitter blow of disappointment.

He had been so convinced that Woodford was his murderer.

He pulled himself together as Woodford continued.

‘My patient died in the night. I got home just after four a.m. In the morning I heard on the radio about the death of a head teacher. I tried to ring Jess but there was no answer, and they told me at the school that she hadn’t come in and the police were there. I began to get really worried so I went round to the mortuary—’

‘On the pretext of checking things out for your patient who died.’ Horton groaned inwardly. This had the ring of truth about it, and it could easily be checked.

She said, ‘Gaye told me who it was. I couldn’t believe it.

I had to see her.’

She pushed her hands further into her pockets. She was shivering and near to collapse. He should call for a car, but he didn’t want to break the flow of her statement, besides he knew that she wasn’t going to retract it. Far from it, she seemed relieved to be able to talk to someone. The marine unit would be here soon anyway. But what the hell was he going to charge her with? He’d try another question. ‘How did you get her to mulberry?’

‘I didn’t. That’s what puzzled me at first before I discovered that her killer had used my boat to take her there.’

Her killer? Who the blazes
was
that? He was rapidly running out of ideas. But he had detected a change in her tone of voice. It was harsher and her eyes narrowed. Quickly picking up on it he said, ‘You know who killed her?’

‘Timothy Boston. He told me before
I
killed
him
.’

And there it was. She hadn’t killed Langley, but she had taken revenge on her murderer. How did she arrive at the conclusion that Boston had killed her lover?

‘I didn’t know that on Friday,’ she went on, her voice sharper. ‘After I’d seen Jess in the mortuary I hurried to my boat. There was no blood and nothing had been disturbed. I thought then that Jess must have been attacked while walking back to her apartment. I should have told you that I had been with Jess the night she was killed, but I was worried what you might think. And there was my husband and his career to think of. So I kept silent. I brought my boat back here.

Then I heard on the news that her body had been found on the mulberry and I guessed that my boat had been used to take her there. I checked the log and the mileage showed I was correct. I couldn’t think who had done such a terrible thing and why, until I began to suspect that maybe my husband had found out about our affair. But I really couldn’t see him in the role of killer. I didn’t know what to do until I received the letter.’

Her hands came out of the pockets. She wrapped her arms around her body, hugging herself.

‘Boston wrote to you?’

‘He was going to blackmail me. In his letter he told me to meet him on his boat in Gosport Marina and bring one thou-sand pounds. If I didn’t show then he would go to the police and tell them exactly what happened on the night Jessica died, and that he would ruin my career. I had no choice. Of course, I knew he wouldn’t stop there; blackmailers never do, or so I understand. He was an arrogant man, Inspector. Full of his own self-importance and I was sick of men like him.’

Horton recalled Boston’s stance when he’d asked Susan Pentlow for an interview: the man’s over protectiveness and pompousness.

‘Boston seemed surprised at first that I’d obeyed his instructions. He was standing in the cockpit and I was on the pontoon.

I made sure to bring a holdall with me but it didn’t contain any money.’

No, thought Horton, only the syringe with a lethal dose of methadone. Why had Boston been surprised? Did he think Dr Woodford would dismiss the letter?

‘What happened?’ he asked, watching her closely. She seemed calm and in control.

‘Despite his requests for me to climb onboard I stayed on the pontoon. That meant he had to climb off the boat, which was exactly what I wanted. He told me that he’d seen Jess and me together that night. We’d foolishly kissed on deck, and from that he must have seen we were in love. It wasn’t a little peck on the cheek. I tried to call his bluff by saying that Jess had told me about finding him on a boat last week with a bag full of stolen antiques and that if he so much as said one word about my affair with Jess then I would go to the police.’

Horton had been right then. He felt chuffed about that at least. Boston had been at Town Camber that night to kill Langley and plant her body on the Martin’s boat and that was why he had shopped Johnson and Goodall. But he’d seen Langley and Woodford and had a better idea.

Woodford said, ‘Boston just smiled and said, “Where’s your evidence?” Of course, I didn’t have any but I said I could make things difficult for him. “Not half as difficult as I can make them for you,” I recall him replying. He told me that he’d taken Jess to the mulberry and dumped her there like rubbish. He put money wrapped in honey in her knickers.’

‘Why?’

‘He laughed when I asked him and made some flippant remark about a wise owl falling for not so sweet a pussy-cat.

That’s when I injected him with a massive and fatal dose of methadone. He stopped laughing then.’

Horton suppressed a shudder at the blandness of her words.

She said, ‘I pushed him over the pontoon. I didn’t know his clothes were going to get caught and he’d be discovered so soon. He deserved to die for what he did to Jess. And I don’t mind going to prison for it. I’d do it again.’ Her head came up defiantly. Her fair cheeks flushed. There was anger and pain in her expression.

‘And Tom Edney? Why did you kill him?’

‘I didn’t.’ She looked up surprised. ‘Why should I?’

‘Because he also saw you with Langley and you had to silence him.’

But she was vigorously shaking her head. ‘No.’

There was a pause. Horton could hear the rain beating against the coach roof and pounding off the decks. If he believed her, who killed Edney? Was it Boston? Had Edney seen Boston kill Jessica Langley on Woodford’s boat that night? But somehow Horton couldn’t see Boston slitting anyone’s throat, whereas a doctor and one skilled in surgery could have done. Again he had the vague notion he was missing something. He tried to recall what it was but annoyingly it refused to come to him, like a face you recognize but the name of the person eludes you.

He said, ‘You should have come to us.’ If she was speaking the truth then she had committed no crime until she had killed Boston, and they would have got the evidence to charge and convict Boston.

‘I thought of the trial and the public exposure. I thought that I could make it look as if Boston had killed himself because he couldn’t live with what he had done to Jess. If Gaye hadn’t been so good at her job, if his body hadn’t got caught, I might have got away with it. But I don’t care now.

I’m glad you’ve come, Inspector. I am quite happy to go with you and make a full statement. I want everyone to know how that wicked man killed Jess. I loved her and I don’t care who knows it now,’ she declared with a note of defiance in her voice.

Horton wondered what her husband would make of that. It was time for them to leave. Where was Sergeant Elkins? Was he on the pontoon waiting? Horton hadn’t heard a motorboat entering the marina. He didn’t think Woodford was going to protest though. He would call for a patrol car. The case was closed. He’d found Boston’s killer and according to Teresa Woodford, Boston had killed Langley and he thought, probably Tom Edney. That would please Uckfield. And yet he still felt uneasy.

She stood up and he stepped back to allow her to ease her way out of her seat. There wasn’t enough room for both of them to walk together, and he didn’t think she was going to make a bolt for it.

He said, ‘Did Boston punch her?’

‘Punch?’ She spun round to face him and in that glance he knew instantly that he had got it wrong. Her words flitted through his brain as he saw her eyes go beyond him. A true alpha male.

A reputation to uphold. This is the way we go to school . . .

This is the way we come out of school . . . a wise old owl, a series of initials . . . MBBS . . . a throat expertly cut . . . Boston had used a stage name . . .

The cabin door creaked. Horton swung round but already he was too late. Something struck him a stunning blow and he fell into a deep pit of darkness.

It was still dark when he opened his eyes. And he was very wet, although not as wet as he would have been if he hadn’t been under the spray hood, he noticed. The rocking movement of the boat and the soft drone of the engine told him they were at sea. A quick glance showed him that the sails weren’t raised. The rain was beating against his legs, the salt spray stinging his face. His head felt as though it had been split in two. He made to reach out a hand to touch the damp sticky mess that covered the left hand side of his face when he realized they were tied in front of him. He shifted a little trying to straighten up. It hurt like hell.

‘You must have a very thick skull, Inspector.’

Horton looked up from the floor of the cockpit and saw the man he had expected to see at the helm: Dr Simon Thornecombe.

Thornecombe was wearing a foul-weather suit of jacket and trousers, the ones that Langley had borrowed, Horton guessed.

He had only his leather jacket to guard him against the elements. It was doing its best, but that wasn’t nearly good enough.

Here was Woodford’s alpha male, her husband. She knew he had been in the rear cabin listening to her confession. She had wanted him to hear it. It saved her telling him to his face.

‘It’s a pity you had to arrive when you did, Inspector. If you think I am going to allow all that filth to come out at a trial and make me a laughing stock, then you have badly misjudged me.’

‘Where is she?’ Horton shouted, alarmed.

‘She’s rather tied up at the moment, like you.’

Horton wondered why she hadn’t made a run for it while Thornecombe was bashing him over the head. But, of course, he knew the answer to that: she didn’t care what happened to her now her lover was dead.

Above the roar of the wind and sea, Thornecombe shouted,

‘By the time they discover her body the rope marks will have worn off, if there is anything left of her by then. And it will be the case of a simple accident, swept overboard in the storm.

I’ll report it of course, distraught.’

Horton’s heart skipped a beat. He was staring at a ruthless, driven man. ‘You’d go to those lengths to protect your reputation?’ he shouted, incredulously.

‘Of course.’

‘And me?’

‘You make things a little more complicated, but the same fate will befall you, Inspector, unreported by me, of course.’

So that was it, Thornecombe intended getting far enough out into the Solent, before throwing him overboard. He had to get out of this. Could he distract Thornecombe and take over the helm? But how? His hands were tied. He heaved himself up on to the seat in the cockpit. Even though Thornecombe was motoring and not sailing, the yacht was still rocking in the heavy seas.

Horton scoured the deck, his eyes growing accustomed to the darkness. Was there something that might help him? Even if he managed to get Thornecombe out of the way could he get to the radio? He noted that Thornecombe had closed the hatch down to the cabin.

‘They’ll be out looking for us,’ he shouted, thinking of the marine unit. All he had to do was hold out. Would they get to him on time, though? The wind was rising. It must be a Force 6 and building. Thornecombe was wearing a life jacket.

He had no such luxury.

Thornecombe seemed untroubled by the weather and to be a competent helmsman. He said, ‘I’ll hear and see them coming. It will give me enough time to dispose of you. No one can last long in the sea in October, especially if they’re unconscious. All they’ll find is me, out sailing on my yacht.

Bit eccentric, I grant you, on an October night and with a storm brewing, but then most sailors are a little mad.’

Thornecombe was pushing it, but it was possible. He might have a struggle to get his wife on deck and into the sea, before any kind of rescue reached them, but by then Horton wouldn’t be in a fit state to worry. He’d be dead. Think, man, think, he urged his aching head.

‘You’ll be arrested when you return.’

‘Without any evidence? I don’t think so.’

Despite negotiating the rough seas and appalling weather Thornecombe still managed to throw him a pitying glance.

Horton thought quickly, which was difficult when his head was throbbing and he was soaked to the skin. ‘My colleagues know I came to see you. I asked the man in the marina office where your boat was berthed.’ And he thought of that message he’d left on Cantelli’s mobile. Had he listened to it yet? Had he reported it to Uckfield, or driven round to Gosport Marina when he had got no answer to Horton’s mobile?

He saw Thornecombe frown before his expression cleared.

‘You mean my wife’s boat. I have no connection with it.

My wife lured you here and then pushed you overboard. If I am found on board then I will say that I tried to stop her, and she fell.’

‘And all this just because your wife has admitted to having a lesbian affair!’ Horton goaded, whilst searching the deck for a way out. Then he saw Thornecombe stiffen. Yes, at the word lesbian, but there was more to his reaction. God! How stupid he had been. Suddenly everything became clear. Dr Woodford had denied killing Langley. She had been telling the truth. Boston hadn’t killed her either.