Shroud of Evil (7 page)

Horton said, ‘Was Kenton involved in any investigation for His Lordship?’ Perhaps that was the reason why Eunice Swallows was guarding her client list so zealously. But what would Eames want Swallows to investigate when Horton believed he had the British Intelligence services at his disposal? He had no proof that Lord Eames was connected with MI5 though. Maybe he’d got that wrong. He added, ‘Could Kenton have been carrying out surveillance work on someone Eames employs, or checking an employee reference?’ But that didn’t explain why his car had been parked at the Admiralty Towers car park, unless that employee had an apartment there or had been visiting someone there and had killed Kenton and brought him over to the island. It seemed unlikely, because why place the body on Eames’ land and draw attention to himself? Unless it was a former employee who’d been sacked as a result of something Kenton had discovered and the employee saw it as a way of getting even.

But Danby scotched that idea. ‘I handle all the security checks on Lord Eames’ staff right across his estate and all of his businesses.’

‘It might have been something other than a security check,’ Horton suggested.

‘Like what?’ asked Uckfield.

‘Maybe he suspected two of his staff of stealing from him or thought his wife was running around with the gardener.’

‘This isn’t Lady Chatterley’s bleeding lover,’ quipped Uckfield.

‘No, but it happens,’ said Horton, and Uckfield would know more about illicit affairs than any of them. If it was female, attractive, preferably under the age of forty and up for it, so was Uckfield, despite being married with two daughters.

‘I think he would have asked me to help if it was a delicate matter,’ Danby replied a little stiffly.

Uckfield said, ‘Have you been inside the house to make sure no one’s stolen the family silver? Kenton could have been killed because he’d disturbed the burglars.’

‘I doubt that,’ Danby replied somewhat acidly. ‘He wouldn’t have got in. There are sophisticated security systems.’

‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ Uckfield added.

Danby eyed Uckfield suspiciously. As an ex-copper he knew what Uckfield was doing. It was a ploy to get rid of him. But he shrugged and headed back to the pontoon. Horton watched him jump up on to it with ease and make for the solid wooden door built into the wall. There Danby turned his back on them and tapped the security pad. Horton thought of the entrance barrier to the Admiralty Towers car park and again considered the possibility that Kenton might have watched someone key in the number and had then simply replicated it.

He turned back to the body. Clarke was checking the digital images he’d taken on his camera, Taylor was grubbing around in the shingle and Tremaine was trying to lift fingerprints from the sail cloth. Horton didn’t think she’d get anything even a quarter decent that the fingerprint bureau could work with.

He said, ‘I’ll ask Elkins to scout along the coast towards Osborne House in case there’s a way on to the beach from that side. Clarke can take some photographs of that and of the entrance to the creek.’

‘OK.’ Uckfield reached for his phone. Over his shoulder he said, ‘Call Dr Clayton, ask her to meet us at the mortuary on the island. No point in her coming here; there’s nothing she can do except certify the poor bugger’s dead and we can all see that. Tell Elkins after Clarke’s got his photos to go back to Portsmouth and collect her. He can also pick up DI Dennings. I’ll get him to set up an incident suite at Newport. You can come with me to the mortuary.’

Although the mortuary wasn’t Horton’s favourite place he was glad that Uckfield had asked him to accompany him there. He’d wondered if the Super would send him back to Portsmouth with Taylor, Tremaine and Clarke, this not being a CID matter. But Uckfield would pull in others from various departments to assist in the investigation and clearly he was going to be one of them. He was glad of that. He heard Uckfield say, ‘DI Dennings, I hope you haven’t got any plans for this weekend …’ And then he moved away.

Horton rather hoped Uckfield had ruined Dennings’ weekend. His views of Dennings, the great hulking oaf, were well known by Uckfield. It wasn’t just sour grapes either, Horton told himself as he headed for Clarke. He’d worked with Dennings on vice and on covert operations with the Intelligence Directorate and Dennings simply didn’t have the mental capacity to be a good or an even mediocre detective. However, that hadn’t stopped Uckfield appointing him to the Major Crime Team when the position had been promised to Horton. Uckfield claimed he was under orders from the then Chief Constable, his father-in-law, who hadn’t wanted a cop who’d been on an eight-month suspension for rape allegations anywhere near it or the station, while Dennings who had been with Horton on that ill-fated operation had come out smelling of roses. Only because he’d sat on his fat arse and done nothing except stare through a telescopic camera. But he’d kept his nose clean and played it by the book. Since then Uckfield had admitted secretly to Horton that he was keen to get Dennings out but claimed his hands were tied. Even though they now had a new Chief Constable, Horton guessed he was still out of favour because of his unorthodox policing style. Horton wasn’t sure how hard Uckfield was trying to ditch Dennings either. Even if Dennings did go, Horton doubted he’d be appointed in his place and certainly not if DCI Bliss was appointed Uckfield’s second-in-command. CID looked much more attractive if that happened.

He wasn’t improving his chances either, he thought, by withholding information. He’d missed the opportunity to tell Uckfield about the beachcomber but he knew that even given the chance he would have remained silent. Every instinct was urging him to do so. But it disturbed him. Was he hindering a murder investigation? Wyndham Lomas had seemed pretty harmless.
Yeah, and so had Dr Crippen, Jack the Ripper and Frederick West
, he thought, relaying instructions to Clarke who nodded and went to join Elkins and Ripley on the police launch. Horton eased his conscience with the thought that he’d see what Dr Clayton had to report first. He could always return later and try to locate this Lomas. Surely he wouldn’t be that difficult to find.

He returned to the corpse. Tremaine looked up and shook her head, which meant she could get little from the sail cloth. When Dr Clayton and the mortuary assistant unwrapped it from the body Horton hoped to be able to see what type of sail it was. Not that that meant much, because it wouldn’t come with the boat’s name stamped all over it, and even if it had some identifying feature that didn’t mean it had come from the killer. It could have come from anywhere.

He was about to call Dr Clayton when his phone rang. It was Bliss. Horton knew she’d catch up with him eventually.

‘Inspector, I have received a formal complaint about your attitude from Eunice Swallows. You entered the apartment belonging to the husband of one of her clients despite not having permission, on whose authority?’ she snapped.

‘My own. I had reason to believe Mr Kenton might be inside, possibly ill or injured. I was wrong.’

‘I’d say you were. This does not—’

But he cut her short. ‘Kenton’s been found dead. On a beach on the Isle of Wight. I’m there now.’

There was a moment’s stunned silence before she said, ‘Why wasn’t I informed?’

‘I didn’t realize you were on duty, Ma’am.’

‘I—’

Again he cut her off. ‘Detective Superintendent Uckfield is with me at the scene. He
was
informed and it is now a Major Crime Team investigation.’

Again a fragmentary pause. ‘I’ll call him.’

She rang off before Horton could utter another sound. Horton heard Uckfield’s phone ring, the moment he came off the line to Dennings. Horton called Dr Gaye Clayton on her mobile, hoping she was available and not out sailing, although the weather wasn’t exactly fair he thought, looking up at the gathering dark clouds and at the high rolling waves topped with foaming white spray.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she declared brightly, her West Country accent sounding stronger on the phone, ‘you’ve interrupted the very important business of food shopping to say you’ve got a body.’

‘Afraid so, and it means a trip to the island.’ He told her that Sergeant Elkins would pick her up from the Commercial Ferry Port berth in ninety minutes.

‘Good, that gives me time to go home and unload this lot.’

He knew that she lived alone. She’d once told him she was divorced but had never volunteered anything more about her personal circumstances, and he’d never asked. He’d seen her with male medical colleagues having a drink and didn’t doubt she had admirers. Why shouldn’t she? She was attractive, in a boyish kind of way.

Uckfield was still on his phone. Maybe he was still talking to Bliss or perhaps he was speaking to ACC Dean, his boss. Danby emerged from the rear of Lord Eames’ property and Horton joined him on the pontoon.

‘No sign of any intruder,’ Danby reported, ‘as I knew there wouldn’t be. I’d like to stay until the body is removed.’

‘Fine.’ Horton called Newport police station and asked them to tell the undertakers to stand by at Newport Quay, which was a short distance from the hospital mortuary. He then rang the coastguard services and, after briefing the officer in charge, requested their assistance in removing the body and transporting it to Newport Quay, as the marine unit was tied up and he thought it would be extremely difficult to negotiate the body through the woods. They could have taken it via Lord Eames’ back entrance but Danby hadn’t volunteered that option and Horton didn’t suggest it although it would have given him the opportunity to see the property. The coastguard said they’d be across within twenty minutes.

Uckfield beckoned Horton over.

‘Bliss is going to break the news of Kenton’s death to Eunice Swallows. She’ll get a full list of the cases Kenton was working on, along with names and addresses of the clients and those he was investigating.’

‘Including details of the Veermans.’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ll also need to check out this Roger Watling. I don’t think he would have left Kenton’s car in his space and then made such a fuss but he could have considered it a good diversionary tactic.’

‘I’ll get Trueman on to that. Wonder Boy’s given permission for Bliss to work as the DCI in the incident suite, which Trueman’s setting up now.’

Wonder Boy was one of Uckfield’s kinder terms for ACC Dean, whom he often referred to more derogatorily as the gnome on account of his diminished height and beaky nose. Horton thought the news of Bliss’s involvement wouldn’t exactly thrill Trueman. He didn’t need the hyperactive, overcritical DCI hovering over his shoulder and questioning his actions every other minute. But he’d bear it with the stoical silence that was his customary manner. Extra manpower would be drafted in and, depending on the outcome of the autopsy, it might mean that Cantelli and Walters’ weekend could be disrupted. Horton had no conscience about disturbing DC Walters but he did about taking Cantelli away from the bosom of his family.

They waited until the coastguard had zipped Kenton into a body bag, by which time it had started raining and the police launch had returned from its reconnaissance of the shore and creek entrance. Elkins said they’d gone as far as they could up the creek but not to the top. ‘We’ll need the RIB for that,’ he reported. ‘And there’s no entrance we could see to the west of the pontoon.’ Taylor had mapped the crime scene and he, Tremaine and Clarke left on the launch for Portsmouth. Danby offered Uckfield and Horton a lift on his boat to Newport Quay, which Uckfield accepted with alacrity. Horton wasn’t complaining either. Despite it being a choppy journey it was better than having to hack their way through the undergrowth.

Many times as they headed up the River Medina to the island’s capital town, Horton was tempted to tell Uckfield about his presence on that beach and about his chance meeting with the beachcomber, but he didn’t. He didn’t like the fact that he was withholding vital information. The thought made him tense. But he also didn’t care for the coincidence. He didn’t understand what was going on –
if
something was – and until he did he was going to keep silent. Kenton might still have been alive on Friday at midday, but if he had been then Lomas could have been looking over the location with a view to taking Kenton’s body there after killing him.

They took their leave of Danby, with Uckfield promising to keep him informed, and climbed into the waiting police car. As they were driven the short distance to the mortuary the beachcomber’s words plagued Horton.
‘You never know what you might find washed up on the beach.’
He did now.

‘L
ooks interesting,’ Gaye Clayton said. Dressed in her mortuary garb with a microphone headband placed under the cap covering her spiky auburn hair and the mouthpiece in front of her lips, which Horton knew was connected to a small recording machine in the pocket of her mortuary plastic gown, she eyed the corpse on the slab with a gleam in her green eyes.

Looking up, she addressed them. ‘Are you staying for the autopsy?’

Uckfield replied. ‘No, only until you unwrap him. We want to know how he was killed because I don’t think he crept in there and zipped himself up.’

‘Can’t see any zip,’ she replied, her freckled face peering at the body, ‘unless it’s last year’s model and it’s up the back.’

Uckfield smiled facetiously.

She nodded at the mortuary attendant, a sturdy, solemn man in his late fifties, who stepped forward with a digital camera and video. Uckfield tutted impatiently and shifted his bulk as the corpse was again photographed and videoed. Gaye Clayton was good, the best forensic pathologist Horton had come across, and she wouldn’t be hurried by Uckfield or anyone else.

He studied Jasper Kenton’s lifeless pale face visible through the opening of the sail cloth, peering out like a man behind a curtain not wanting to be seen. It must have given Mike Danby quite a shock finding the body of someone he knew on one of his most prestigious client’s land. Not that he had displayed that when they’d met, though he’d sounded shaken enough on the phone. Danby was ex-job and would have been used to seeing bodies in worse states than this; he would have quickly engaged one of the techniques for coping with witnessing a violent death – they each perfected their own. After the initial shock the adrenalin of the investigation would kick in. Horton felt it now but this time it was tinged with anxiety and apprehension which he couldn’t shake off. The forehead was visible, the brown eyes were still open, and the nose and fleshy lips with the cleft in the chin were showing beneath it.