Shroud of Evil (27 page)

That wasn’t on his CV. And Danby certainly hadn’t mentioned it. Why? Because he didn’t know or he didn’t want him to know? Horton’s interest deepened. His police antennae told him this meant something. Quickly he recalled what he’d read and what Trueman had told him about Kenton; he was certain there wasn’t anything about him having a degree.

He said, ‘Your brother didn’t go to university.’

‘No. He preferred to stay with the band. My parents were furious, not with Jasper but with me. They blamed me for corrupting him and ruining his future chances. They didn’t want to have anything more to do with me. Jasper said not to let it worry me. He’d talk them round. I believed him. Jasper could be very persuasive.’

She said it with a passion borne of bitterness tinged with resignation and regret. Horton’s mind raced with thoughts as she continued.

‘The band got bigger and more famous. Mason and I got engaged. He even bought me a ring.’ She looked sad and her head dropped but quickly came up again. Not before Horton saw a ring on the third finger of her left hand. It looked expensive. A large ruby set in a cluster of diamonds. ‘But Mason and I spilt up,’ she said hastily, her gaze flicking between them uneasily.

Horton saw at once what she meant. ‘Jasper used you to get the job. He targeted you to get in with the band.’

She studied him with surprise because he’d so quickly understood. ‘Yes. Jasper used everyone to get what he wanted. That’s what he was like. He was very charming but very ruthless. He’d let no one and nothing stand in his way.’

And here was yet another side of the dead man’s personality that no one had mentioned. Alongside the thorough, patient, painstaking, quiet man, and one who had been described as reckless, impulsive, and chatty, Horton now added persuasive, manipulative and cunning. If he put what she was saying with what Danby had told him about how they’d met, a thread was beginning to form. It was possible that Kenton had singled out Mike Danby and probably before him Eunice Swallows. Why though? What was it that Kenton had wanted? Was it access to Chas Foxton via Danby? If so where did that leave them with Brett Veerman as a suspect? Time to consider that later.

‘What did Jasper want from the band?’ he asked.

‘What do you think? Money. He even used our parents.’

‘He sponged off your parents?’

She smiled sardonically. ‘No, Jasper was too clever for that. He never took a penny from them. He was the hard-working, clever and very dutiful son. They adored him.’

‘Then how did he use them?’ asked Cantelli, clearly as intrigued as Horton.

Women’s voices came from the room behind them as they began to try on clothes.

‘They went to their graves thinking Jasper was a saint. My mother died first. I came back for the funeral and my father barely spoke two words to me. It hurt.’ She stared down at her hands then took a breath and her head came up. ‘I got into a relationship with a married man, had his child, he ditched me. Then my father died three years after my mother. Jasper found where I was living and asked me to come to the funeral. The quarrel wasn’t between us, even though I resented him. I refused. He told me that Dad had left everything to him but that he didn’t think that fair and he was prepared to split it fifty-fifty. It wasn’t much he said. The house had been remortgaged to pay for health care bills and Dad had spent much of his savings. Jasper said there was about ten thousand pounds left in the estate. There should have been more and there probably had been and that had gone to Jasper. But five thousand pounds was a lot of money to a single parent and I took it.’

‘It was money to keep you silent,’ said Horton. But if she had been that hard up, why hadn’t she sold the ring Petterson had given her – unless she had and the one she was wearing now was from another man, her husband. Except she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

‘I can’t prove anything,’ she was saying, ‘but I think Jasper took money from my father’s account gradually over a period of time, either without his knowledge or because Jasper had spun him some yarn when he was ill. And Jasper put the money somewhere no one would find when it went to probate.’

And Horton was beginning to see how Kenton could have done that. He had been an expert on computer fraud and cyber crime and although this was in the 1980s and 1990s, when the Internet was in its infancy, before cyber crime and Internet fraud had become the epidemic it now was, Kenton had cut his teeth on siphoning funds from his parents’ account so that they wouldn’t notice. He’d been honing his skills before hitting the big time later. And Horton wouldn’t mind betting that was what he had done with the band’s money. Kenton’s ability with a computer had existed long before many had even tapped at a keyboard, manipulated a mouse and stared at a screen.

With a wry smile she said, ‘I don’t think he will have left me anything in his will.’

Horton didn’t even know if there was one. Dennings had said nothing about finding it in the apartment and if Jasper Kenton hadn’t made a will then Louise Durridge might be in for a windfall.

‘Have you any idea who would have killed him?’ she asked somewhat anxiously as laughter came from the room behind them. But Horton also caught the sound of a movement outside. And he glimpsed the silhouette of a man behind the window. There was someone in the yard. Louise Durridge looked troubled.

‘Do you?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she answered quickly, but perhaps she did and there was only one man she would protect, he thought, rising swiftly and crossing to the door. The man who had given her that ring. With his heart pumping, he wondered if he was about to come face to face with the beachcomber. Louise Durridge sprang up. Her skin paled. Horton threw open the door and found himself facing a well-built man in his late forties with longish greying-brown hair who, disappointingly, was not the beachcomber Lomas.

‘It’s OK, Louise,’ the man said as he entered the room. Then to Horton he said, ‘I’m Mason Petterson and although I’d like to have done, I didn’t kill Jasper Kenton.’

‘J
asper Kenton came to see you,’ said Horton, but Petterson was prevented from answering as Louise Durridge’s assistant put her worried head around the door.

‘We’re rather busy,’ she said agitatedly.

‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’ Louise Durridge turned her anxious eyes on Horton – not, he thought, because she might be losing sales but because she was afraid for her lover.

Petterson said, ‘I don’t know how he found me but he did. Louise and I have told no one and everyone believes me to be Joshua Jenkins, Louise’s partner.’

But Jasper Kenton was skilled in tracing assets and people. Chas Foxton would have been easy to find. He was a public figure. Horton didn’t know about the rest of the band but he soon would.

Petterson took Louise’s hand and continued, ‘After the band split up I followed another passion of mine, painting. And I became successful, helped no doubt because I was already a very public figure. I had a name and that brought punters into the art gallery and sold my paintings. But it also pissed me off because I felt people were buying them because of who I was, not for what they were. I took to drinking in a big way. Then one night during an exhibition I lost it. The media loved that. There were pictures of me all over the newspapers, completely off my head, ripping up my paintings. I stopped painting, drank more, until one day I tried to end it all by throwing myself off the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. I was talked down by a kindly fireman. After that I took myself off to the Priory Clinic. It took me five years to rebuild myself. I changed my name and rented a remote cottage in Wales in the Brecon Beacons where by chance I met up again with Louise. She was on holiday and her car had broken down. The mist was coming in. Her mobile phone wasn’t working, she had no idea where she was. I recognized her at once but hoped she didn’t recognize me – not because I didn’t want to see her; I did. But because I didn’t want to see Jasper, or anyone from those days, and I certainly didn’t want to be involved with any revival or some such crap.’

‘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.’