Shroud of Evil (4 page)

He saw Walters leave. Twenty minutes later Cantelli stuck his head round the door. ‘The extra patrols are set up for after the restaurants close from one a.m. onwards. Let’s hope it’s a quiet night for fights otherwise they might get called away. And I’ve arranged a meeting with DI Grimes and his team for Monday morning, nine-thirty. Tim Shearer said he’d come himself. I’m off home now, unless there’s anything …’

‘There isn’t,’ Horton quickly broke in. He knew how important Cantelli’s family was to him and they were deprived of the sergeant’s presence enough times without him adding to it unnecessarily. Not that Charlotte ever complained and neither did Cantelli’s five children, as far as Horton was aware. He wished Cantelli a good weekend with a silent longing that he could be with his own daughter, Emma. Maybe if he lived in a flat rather than on his boat Catherine would let Emma stay with him. Catherine thought the boat too cold and unsuitable for an eight-year-old. But he hated the idea of living in a poky apartment crammed in the middle of the city. At least with his boat he had the space of the marina and the sea beyond it, and he could satisfy his restlessness by sailing. Not tonight though, he thought, as he headed home in the dark and the rain. The wind was howling through the masts when he reached the marina. The rain was ricocheting off the deck like bullets and the sea was slapping against the hull of his yacht. Most days he enjoyed returning but tonight he felt a stab of envy at Cantelli in his warm, family house on the eastern edge of Portsmouth, surrounded by people who loved him and whom he loved.

He gazed around the chilly cabin, feeling its emptiness. His loneliness settled on him like a heavy weight. If he could just have someone. He had hoped that Harriet Eames, who he’d worked with a couple of times, might be that someone until he’d come to suspect that her father might be involved in his mother’s disappearance. Perhaps he was destined to be alone, he thought, making a coffee and trying to shake off the clawing suffocating feeling of depression. Even Bliss had someone, he considered with bitterness, imagining her chatting with Eunice Swallows over a drink, discussing Jasper Kenton’s disappearance. He didn’t know that for a fact, but when had facts got in the way of depression?

Irritated with himself he slammed down his coffee cup and rose. Sitting here feeling bloody sorry for himself wasn’t going to get him anywhere. There were only three antidotes for that: one was sailing, which was completely out of the question in this weather; another was work, which he’d had enough of for one day. So that left him with the third. He changed and went for a run.

H
orton was at his desk early the next morning. He had no need to be there and would have gone sailing if the weather forecast had been more optimistic, but rain and high winds had been forecast and it was better to occupy his time catching up with his backlog of paperwork than mooching about the boat. His run along the promenade last night had helped to lift the depression for a while but the early hours of the morning had seen it return with a vengeance. After trying unsuccessfully for two hours to shake it off and return to sleep he’d given up and headed for work. He’d made good inroads into answering his emails and filling in forms – although the pile never seemed to diminish, only expand – and at eight-fifteen he thought he’d earned himself a canteen breakfast. He headed towards it, thinking he would treat himself to the full works – eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, tomatoes and anything else on offer – when Sergeant Warren intercepted him.

‘Jasper Kenton’s car’s been found,’ he said.

‘Where?’ Horton asked, half expecting Warren to say at the Continental Ferry Port or Southampton Airport car park, which would fit with his theory of Kenton doing a runner with a client’s money. So he was surprised when Warren said it was parked in a resident’s space at the Admiralty Towers car park in Queen Street. That was a modern seven-storey block of apartments close to The Hard and not far from the waterfront and marina at Oyster Quays. Had Kenton dumped his car there and taken a boat across to the continent or to the Channel Islands?

Warren continued. ‘The resident whose space the car’s parked in arrived there half an hour ago. He called the car park company to complain but when he got no reply he called us. He’s the “I pay my rates and your wages so get someone down here now and move it” type.’

Horton knew them well.

‘He says he has never seen the vehicle before and has no idea who its owner is. I’ve sent a unit over to pacify him but told the officers not to touch the car.’

Horton didn’t have Jasper Kenton’s car keys. They could force an entry and that would probably be quicker than asking Eunice Swallows to go to Kenton’s house and return with a spare set of keys. Judging by what she had told him yesterday Kenton probably had them hanging in a special place, neatly labelled. But Horton had another idea.

‘Call Nigel Bowman, give him the vehicle details and ask him to meet me there.’

Bowman was head mechanic at the police vehicle workshop. It would take Bowman about forty minutes to get a set of keys that would unlock the Vauxhall. There was the chance that Jasper Kenton was inside one of the apartments and had inadvertently parked his car in the wrong space. Horton could get a couple of officers knocking on doors but that was a lot of doors to knock on – and why hadn’t Kenton called his business partner and told her he was there? Maybe because he was ill inside one of the flats, or perhaps even dead.

He instructed Warren to call Eunice Swallows and ask her if any of the clients Kenton was investigating lived at Admiralty Towers or if Kenton knew anyone there. She’d claimed he had no friends but perhaps Kenton had a lover he didn’t want Eunice Swallows to know about. He could understand that, having met the woman.

It was just after eight-thirty when he swung into the ground-level car park beneath the glass and steel apartment block. There were two parking areas: one for residents’ parking, the other for public parking, the latter of which was used mainly by those visiting the nearby Historic Dockyard. As that didn’t open until ten o’clock it was deserted. There were a few cars in the residents’ spaces and a bad-tempered looking squat man in his late forties standing by one of them, a high performance new sports car. Judging by his expression and his wild gesticulations he was haranguing PC Liz Jenkins, who remained stoically unmoved, maintaining only a look of polite interest on her attractive dark face. Horton knew the expression well. Jenkins would have experienced a lot worse.

The man’s eyes flicked to Horton, registered the Harley and Horton’s clothes and rapidly dismissed him. Horton was used to that. No one expected a police officer to be riding a motorbike unless he was a traffic cop in uniform. Horton crossed to PC Allen who was standing by Kenton’s car.

‘No keys in the ignition, sir,’ Allen announced. ‘It’s locked. I tried the handle – with gloves on,’ he added hastily, ‘but Mr Roger Watling, that’s the man with PC Jenkins, says he tried all the doors and the boot.’

Horton peered inside the dark-blue saloon. It was spotlessly clean and tidy with nothing visible on the seats and it clearly had not been broken into. The exterior and windscreen, however, were rain spattered and a little dirty. It had stopped raining at about three a.m. but that didn’t mean the vehicle hadn’t been parked here; he had no idea when it might last have been cleaned.

There was no ticket on the windscreen, which was no more than he had expected, not only because the vehicle was in a resident’s space and therefore wouldn’t have needed a ticket but also because this was the type of car park where you collected your ticket at the barrier and inserted it into the machine before leaving, paying only for the number of hours you’d been parked. The residents had their own entrance lane and barrier, which clearly Kenton must have entered by. There might be CCTV, he thought, glancing around, and with a bit of luck there might also be a system that had number-plate-reading technology which could tell them when Kenton had parked here. However, the fact the car was in the residents’ area and not the public car park meant that Kenton must either have been buzzed through by someone he knew living here, or he had a pass. There was every likelihood therefore that he was inside the building. Perhaps even now he was in one of these flats, perfectly safe and happy, wallowing in an excess of sexual bliss. But why park in Roger Watling’s space and not the space of the person he knew? Perhaps he’d just got it wrong, but that didn’t fit with the description Eunice Swallows had given him.

Horton crossed to Roger Watling and received a hostile glare from the short chubby man, dressed expensively but causally in chinos and a leather jacket over a T-shirt. His expression changed to one of surprise when Horton introduced himself and showed his ID. ‘You live here, Mr Watling?’ he politely enquired.

‘No. I live in London. I have an apartment here. I come down some weekends. Look, all I want you to do is move the bloody thing,’ Watling declared, exasperated. His eyes were bloodshot and Horton could smell garlic and alcohol on his breath.

‘Do you know a Mr Jasper Kenton?’

‘No. Is that whose car it is?’

Horton retrieved his mobile phone where he’d uploaded a photograph of Jasper Kenton and showed it to Watling. ‘Do you recognize this man?’

‘Never set eyes on him. When are you going to get it shifted?’ He ran his stubby fingers through his gelled hair.

‘As soon as we can, sir. Have you any idea why Mr Kenton should park his car in your space?’

‘None whatsoever. Now if—’

‘How are residents permitted entry to the car park?’

‘We have a fob.’

‘May I see it?’

Watling huffed and puffed but thrust his fat fingers into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out his keys. ‘That’s it.’ He indicated a small flat black pad on his key ring. ‘I press it against the pad at the barrier and that gets me into the car park and into the apartment block.’ He jerked his head at a door behind him. A sign above it read: ‘Entrance to Apartments’.

‘Were you here last night?’

‘No. Look, I told this officer. I arrived this morning at about eight o’clock and found that car in my space.’

‘Have you been up to your apartment?’

‘No. I rang the car parking company and then you lot and was told to wait.’

Horton turned to PC Jenkins. ‘Perhaps you’d like to go with Mr Watling to his apartment.’

‘You don’t think this man is inside it!’ Watling cried, alarmed.

‘We have to check, sir.’

‘He bloody well better not be.’

But Horton wondered if Kenton had been investigating Roger Watling. If he had though he’d hardly be likely to park in his space.

Watling marched off, leaving PC Jenkins to hurry after him. Horton didn’t think Watling was going to be too pleased when they asked him for his prints and a statement. But maybe it wouldn’t come to that if it transpired that Kenton was in the building.

Horton addressed PC Allen. ‘Call in Watling’s licence number and check it out.’ His phone rang as a car pulled in and a long thin man with a hooked nose and cheery smile climbed out. He was brandishing a set of keys. It was Warren on the phone.

‘Eunice Swallows is going to check if they have any clients who are resident at Admiralty Towers or if they are investigating anyone living there. She’ll call you.’

Yeah, when?
She’d told him yesterday that she and Kenton always discussed the cases fully. So why the stalling tactics?

The locks on the car gave a satisfying clunk as they sprang open. Pulling on latex gloves, Horton opened the passenger door and peered into the glove compartment. There were no driving gloves, as was usual these days, just the service history and car manual. He found a road atlas in the pouch behind the driver’s door and nothing else. But there was an inbuilt satellite navigation system.

‘Now for the boot,’ he said to Bowman with a slight quickening of pulse. He’d looked into a few in his time and found some very nasty things. But there was no smell emanating from this one to warn them they might be in for a shock. Nevertheless, he tensed. Thankfully it was empty. There wasn’t even a rug. And there was no sign of the surveillance equipment that Eunice Swallows said Jasper Kenton had been issued with and which she had suggested might be in his car.

Allen came off the phone. ‘Roger Watling’s got two convictions for speeding. His main residence is registered as Battersea, London.’

PC Jenkins returned alone to say that there was no one in Roger Watling’s apartment. ‘I’m to let him know when the car is removed. He gave me the name and contact number of the managing agents.’

‘Good, see if you can get a list of the residents.’

He was about to call Eunice Swallows, thinking he’d waited long enough for her to check her cases, when his phone rang and he saw that it was her.

‘Have you found anything?’ she asked. Did he detect a slight nervousness in her tone or was that just concern?

‘No. Do you, or does Mr Kenton, know a Roger Watling?’

‘No,’ she answered promptly and firmly, which made Horton wonder if it was a lie.

‘Is Mr Kenton investigating anyone who lives at Admiralty Towers?’ he asked when she seemed reluctant to volunteer anything further.

There was a moment’s silence, which gave Horton the answer, before she said, ‘It’s confidential.’

‘Not if Mr Kenton is lying ill or injured inside an apartment here,’ Horton said crisply, and clearly that wasn’t Roger Watling’s. That didn’t mean Watling couldn’t be involved in Kenton’s disappearance though. They only had his word he’d arrived from London at about eight o’clock. ‘I need the client’s name and the number of the apartment.’

‘The owner might not be there, and you can’t break in.’

Oh, can’t I
, thought Horton, knowing he could if he suspected a crime had been committed inside the flat or if he had good reason to believe someone’s life was in danger. A missing man and an abandoned car were good enough reason for him. Eunice Swallows must also know that.

‘Do you want us to find Mr Kenton?’ Horton asked tersely.