Deadly Wake, page 23
'Not our problem, Inspector,' she smartly replied. 'It's ACC Dean's decision if he wishes to pass that over to fraud. Paignton and Ben were obviously crooks, they latched on to Halliwell and, after extracting from him all his personal information, killed him, ditched his body in the sea, and Paignton took up residence in Beachwood House while Ben preferred to rough it in the log cabin. The fingerprint bureau has just confirmed they have a match on the landslip corpse with that of Jerry Carswell so from tomorrow you and your team are reassigned, as I instructed earlier.'
Horton relayed this to Cantelli and Walters and told them to knock off home before Bliss changed her mind and got them working that evening. They didn't need telling twice. Horton took his own advice but instead of heading for his boat he made for the hospital to visit Uckfield. The fog was thicker than ever. He pulled into the car park, silenced the Harley and removed his helmet. As he did, his mobile rang. He was in two minds whether to answer it, then seeing who the caller was did so eagerly. It was Harriet Eames.
'My father turned up at the house this afternoon. I asked him if George Caws had visited him. He hasn't.'
As Horton had expected because Caws' first and last visit, as it transpired, had been to Beachwood House. He told her about George Caws being Jerry Carswell and the theory of his death as espoused by Bliss. She listened in silence. Then in a doubtful tone, said, 'And you believe that?'
Horton didn't answer the question. Instead, he said, 'Wyndham Lomas. Does your father know him?'
There was a short pause. He heard a tannoy announcement in the background, although he couldn't make out what it said. She obviously wasn't at home so no chance of her father overhearing the conversation. 'He's never heard of him and he doesn't recognize the description,' she said. 'And neither does he know a Michael Paignton or Cedric Halliwell.'
But Horton caught a note of hesitation in her voice.
He said with some disbelief, 'He didn't recall Paignton being convicted of the murder of Roger Salcombe in 1970?'
'No, he was at Cambridge then.'
'But you asked your father if Paignton had been a close friend of his brother, Gordon?'
There followed another short silence. 'Yes.'
'And?'
'He said he had no idea.'
'But you don't believe him.'
Again, a pause. Then, as though on impulse, she quickly said, 'Can you meet me? There's something I need to tell you.'
It was his turn to keep silent, not for effect, but because his mind was rapidly thinking. What was it she needed to tell him? Something her father had said? Or perhaps Eames had betrayed himself by his reaction when she had put Horton's questions to him, and she was curious? Or could this be a trap? Had Eames asked her to lure him somewhere? But he couldn't see Harriet being used by anyone. Not even her father? No.
'Where?' If her phone was tapped, then her father would know the location of their rendezvous.
'Southampton airport. I'm fog bound. I'm returning to The Hague. I haven't checked in yet. I'll meet you in the terminal.'
'I'll be there in thirty minutes.'
Twenty-two
He found Harriet with an anxious look on her fair face and a rucksack at her feet. Her expression lifted a little as she spotted him, and then quickly clouded over. Horton couldn't see anyone taking any special notice of her or him, but if Richard Eames had had his daughter tailed, or asked her to arrange the rendezvous, then Horton knew whoever it was would be good enough not to be conspicuous. There was an awkwardness about her that he'd seen a hint of before on the Isle of Wight. She looked drained and seemed edgy.
'Let's go outside?' she said, as he drew level.
They struck out, away from the waiting buses and their queues of people until they had a corner of the building to themselves. The fog wrapped its damp tentacles around them, curling the ends of her long fair hair.
'I've been recalled, and I suspect it has something to do with my father. And with Ben.'
That brought him up sharply. His mind spun. 'Ben?'
She took a breath. 'I found his body.'
The air seemed to reel. My God, that was totally unexpected. 'You're Carina Musgrove?'
'Yes. And don't say I can be charged for impersonation, because you know I can't.'
He was finding this difficult to take in while trying to interpret the implications of her words. 'You were working undercover?'
'Yes.'
'Then Ben is, or was, wanted internationally?'
She continued, 'Everything I said in my statement was true.'
'Except for your name, and you omitted several facts,' he sharply rejoined. 'Did your father know?'
'Not until I told him. As soon as he arrived, he started in on you. He knew you had visited the house because he must have seen you on the security monitors.'
And Eames would have seen that his daughter was already in residence and had invited him in. That would have been enough to make him hurry there from wherever he had been.
'Practically the first thing he did was ask me what you had wanted, even before I mentioned those names you gave me. I said you'd asked me about George Caws, Wyndham Lomas and Michael Paignton. He wanted to know what I'd told you, which was nothing because, of course, I'd never heard of them, but I told him your enquiries were in connection with Ben after which I had to tell him about Ben and why I was there. He was annoyed and even though he denied knowing any of those men, I could tell he was lying. Then he told me that it was best if I didn't see you again.'
Horton raised his eyebrows.
'I asked him why. He said something about you being a police officer whose career was unlikely to go anywhere.'
Horton's stomach tightened at the threat, but he made no comment.
'I told him that maybe you didn't want your career to go anywhere and asked him what he meant anyway. He said there were things about you that it was best for me not to know. What those were, he wouldn't say. I was livid with him for treating me like a child. I said I'm thirty-four not sixteen and I'd seen many things in law enforcement that had appalled, shocked and distressed me, and I could never believe you capable of any crime.'
He silently thanked her for that.
'Shortly after I'd told him about Ben, I had a phone call from >my boss at The Hague recalling me, saying that the investigation into Ben's death is no longer our remit and there is nothing to investigate.'
'And you believe your father influenced the recall?'
'I'm sure he did, although I don't know how he arranged it. Perhaps being a peer of realm carries weight,' she said with bitterness.
But Horton knew exactly how Eames could have arranged it, with his influence in the intelligence services. Eames must have been furious that he'd not been told his daughter had been sent over to investigate Ben. A slip up? Or had someone engineered all this? Horton was beginning to think the latter because it was too neat. And he had an idea who that person was.
He could see how angry and hurt she was. She had been determined to make her own way in the world, and in her career, without the advantages of privilege, but she had been thwarted. Horton knew that the truth behind Cedric Halliwell, Michael Paignton and Ben would never be investigated, let alone be revealed. There was no case to answer except Jerry Carswell's murder, and that had already been put down to Ben and Paignton, which was probably the truth anyway. He had several questions to ask her and rapidly tried to arrange them into some kind of order.
'Why did you leave the cottage at Bonchurch and return to your father's house?'
'Because by then you were on the island, and the landslip corpse had been found. I didn't know anything about his body being there and neither did anyone else. It was quite a shock. But that meant my identity as Carina Musgrove was compromised. I went to our house. I was surprised when you arrived, even though I knew you were investigating the death.'
'You needn't have let me in.'
'I was curious, as are all police officers, or we should be.' She gave a faint smile. 'And why shouldn't I have invited you in? You didn't know I had been undercover. Besides, I enjoy your company.'
He also enjoyed hers, but he wouldn't tell her that. There was too much history to make anything more than an acquaintance possible. The fog eddied around them. The airport was eerily silent for a change, with no flights in and out.
'What was your assignment, or can't you tell me?' Horton said, wondering if she would claim she was under orders not to reveal it.
But she took a breath and said, 'I was told that Cedric Halliwell and a man he was friendly with, were wanted for robbery. The theft of valuable diamonds.'
'Then you recognized the name when I mentioned it. You were good. I'd never have guessed. Who told you this?' Horton sharply asked, knowing that the reason she'd been given was a lie. And he could see that she also suspected it now but not at the time of her assignment.
'My boss, and don't ask me where that information came from because I don't know.'
Maybe she didn't but Horton did. From MI5, but not Lord Eames it seemed, because Harriet had said her father had been genuinely surprised and irritated to find her on the investigation. So the orders had come from someone else and were not shared with Eames.
Quickly, she continued, as if eager to get it off her chest. 'Halliwell and Ben had been traced to the Isle of Wight. As I knew the island, I was asked to get more information on them, to see if I could get friendly with them. Before I arrived, the news came through that Halliwell had been found dead on his boat off Ryde and that there were no suspicious circumstances. But there was still Ben who was living in a cabin on the shore. I was instructed to make his acquaintance. I did, but he didn't reveal anything about himself or Cedric Halliwell, and I had no idea that Michael Paignton had assumed Halliwell's ID. There are two things that perhaps I shouldn't be telling you, but I will.'
'Why?' Horton's pulse raced.
'It involves you, and I don't believe my father when he says you are mixed up in criminal activity.' She took a breath and continued, 'My father asked if we'd gone into the garden, down to the shore or to the boat. I said we only went into the kitchen where we had coffee.'
'The boat is on the pontoon then?'
'Yes. The other thing I think you should know is that I saw someone with Ben.'
Horton felt a thrill of excitement.
'It was only once and from a distance, but the two men were talking and seemed to know one another well. Then they both went inside the cabin.'
'You put this in your report?'
'To my boss, yes, but not in my statement to Sergeant Norris's officers.'
Then Eames would have asked to see it after Harriet had asked him about Caws, Lomas and Paignton.
'It was a week before Ben died. I was on the small motorboat I had hired for the purpose of making Ben's acquaintance.'
It couldn't have been Jerry Carswell or Michael Paignton, and neither could it have been Antony Dormand because they were all dead by then. But Horton knew who it was.
'He was sturdily built, tall, about your height, short cropped grey hair, tanned, dressed casually, early sixties late fifties.'
Lomas. Here was proof that Ben had known Lomas. And what was the betting that Lomas knew Cedric Halliwell and Michael Paignton? Was Lomas still around or had he cleared out after his meeting with Ben? Had he killed Ben by some method that had made it look like natural causes? But if Lomas hadn't cleared out, then there was only one place he could be.
'And you told your father this?'
'No, I told my boss at The Hague.'
'Who told your father?'
'Possibly. I don't know. Andy, what has all this got to do with him?' she anxiously asked.
Even if he decided to tell her, he didn't know where to start.
When he remained silent, she persisted. 'Please. I need to know.'
How much did he trust her? Had she been detailed to tell him all this and, as soon as his back was turned, she'd call in to her father? Did it matter now if she did? Swiftly, he decided it didn't.
'Your father and his brother, Gordon, along with Ben and Paignton knew my mother, and they knew what happened to her and why she disappeared in 1978. Your father doesn't want me to discover the truth.'
She looked stunned and confused. 'But why not? I didn't know about your mother.'
'You're not meant to. There's more, Harriet, but I can't tell you.'
She nodded solemnly. 'What are you going to do?'
'Talk to your father. No, Harriet, you can't come. I have to do this alone.'
'I… Will you tell me what happens? Whatever it is, I need to know.'
Did she already know? Had she guessed? Had she overheard Richard Eames talking to his not-so-dead brother, Gordon? Her expression said not; she was troubled and bewildered.
'I can't make that sort of promise.'
'No, I suppose not.'
He watched her go, then made for the Red Jet ferry terminal and the Isle of Wight.
Twenty-three
Horton rode slowly down the same narrow deserted country lane just beyond Wootton as he had in October and, more recently, when he'd found Harriet at the house. The tarmacked road gave way to a gravel track. The trees closed in on either side of him and within seconds he was pulling up in front of the solid grey stone wall and the pair of sturdy wooden gates, behind which were more trees and the house. This time, he didn't alight and neither did he press the intercom. Someone would see he was here.
He swung the Harley round and returned along the track until he came to the fields now on his right and a track on his left which he took, heading north towards the sea. After about a third of a mile the track petered out and in front of him was a dense wood. He silenced the engine. There were no public footpaths here. A sign bordering the woods told him they were 'Private' and that 'Trespassers would be prosecuted'. Ignoring it, as he had in October, he climbed the low fence and trekked through the undergrowth until he came out onto a shingle shore with a small inlet to his right that led up to more trees. That inlet was where Horton thought Lomas had come from after taking a small boat up there and mooring it up on the shore out of sight, screened by the trees.
He struck out to his left where the shore widened. A high wall came into view on his left with the Solent on his right, except that, in the fog, he could see nothing save a vague shadow of a yacht at the end of the pontoon.
The foghorns sounded as he made his way towards the yacht, his heart beating fast, his body as tense as steel. He thought of that foggy day in November 1978 when Jennifer had left their home, never to return. Would the same fate await him?
There was a dim light on board, as he had expected. Had the man on board been forewarned that he would come? Would there be two men on the boat waiting for him? Harriet could have telephoned her father to say he was on his way. Her phone could be tapped and her meeting with him known. Or maybe Richard Eames had known that Harriet would call Horton and tell him she had been warned off him. Richard Eames could easily guess his next move. Horton didn't think he had been tailed, but he realized a tracking device could have been planted on his Harley. He hadn't checked for one. The device could have been there for some time. Eames would know exactly where he was and what he had been doing. His appearance at the gates of the house would also have shown up on the monitors, not that Eames would have needed that if his Harley had been fitted with a tracking device. Now all Eames had to do was slip out of the house, leave the grounds by the door in the wall, and climb on to the pontoon and his yacht, knowing Horton would be drawn to that dim light like a moth to a candle. Horton's heart thumped against his chest. This could be where it ended for him.
He climbed on board. The man at the helm turned to face him. Horton found himself confronting not Richard Eames but Wyndham Lomas, as he had half expected. He could hear no other sound, but were they alone? Richard Eames could be down in one of the cabins, silent, still and waiting.
Lomas had abandoned the shorts and sandals for a sailing jacket over a polo shirt and chinos. Rapidly Horton re-thought what he had learned over the last few days and months. His eyes went to Lomas's left hand, yet he knew he wouldn't find what he sought as Dormand's words raced through his mind, Hands are so important, don't you think? They don't lie. Horton had believed that Dormand had been referring to the ring that Mortimer had been wearing in the photograph from 1967, but that was only partly it, because Horton saw that he had meant Mortimer's burned hands.
