Shroud of Evil (28 page)

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 pulled 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.’

‘W
e 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 Horton, 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.’

Horton didn’t know if Cantelli had said that to remind Foxton that he was no longer young, slim and handsome. Cantelli’s expression was devoid of emotion but Foxton’s mouth tightened and the slit-like eyes in the folds of his flesh narrowed. He’d caught the meaning alright.

‘Well he hadn’t changed much the last time I saw him and that was a hell of a lot more recent than 1989,’ he said abruptly.

‘How recently?’ asked Horton, alert at this news.

‘Five months ago. June.’

‘You had an appointment with him?’

‘Of course I didn’t. I had my boat at Oyster Quays and he was on the pontoon.’

Horton registered the boat. ‘What was Kenton doing there?’

‘No idea. I didn’t ask.’

No, thought Horton, Foxton wasn’t the type to bother making polite conversation or take an interest in a former acquaintance.

‘I was heading for the Isle of Wight Festival where I had acts performing.’

‘You moored up at Lord Eames’ house,’ Horton said, recalling what Danby had previously told him.

‘Yes.’

Horton threw Danby a swift glance. Danby indicated with a slight shake of his head that he’d said nothing about Kenton’s body being found on Eames’ shore. ‘Where is your boat now, sir?’ asked Horton.

‘Monaco. No point in having it here in winter. Sometimes not much point in summer, the weather we get.’

They could check but even if the boat was in Monaco and it hadn’t been used to dispose of Kenton’s body it showed that Foxton could handle a boat. And he could have borrowed one. Danby’s?

Danby was studying Horton closely and a flicker in his expression showed he was following Horton’s thoughts precisely. If Foxton hadn’t borrowed Danby’s boat – which Horton thought unlikely – maybe he had access to another boat or owned more than one. But why kill Kenton? Because Kenton had stolen money from him or because Kenton knew something about the band? No, about Foxton, who he’d made contact with
after
visiting Mason Petterson. Perhaps Kenton had unearthed an under-age sex scandal surrounding the former pop star. And maybe Kenton had been working on that for a long time, hence his approach to Danby, gathering evidence or even planting evidence to finally squeeze money from those in the band who could have been innocent of such charges.

Foxton was saying, ‘The helicopter took Katia Milani over for the festival and then returned for Spanking Blazes.’

‘Mega pop stars,’ Cantelli explained to Horton. Then to Foxton, ‘My daughters Ellen and Sadie are great admirers of them.’

‘Then I’ll get you their autographs.’ Foxton nodded at Danby, clearly giving him instructions to obtain them for Cantelli. Then his small blue eyes shifted back to Horton. ‘I took Tammy Freiding over on the boat because she doesn’t do helicopters and neither do I, nor the kind of plane that can land on the Isle of Wight. I prefer flying in something that has more than four seats and more than one pilot. So I went by boat. I was about to leave Oyster Quays when Kenton hailed me.’