Tide of Death dah-1 Page 10

  Arc lights had been fixed up inside the tower, throwing into harsh spotlight the vestiges of human activity: empty cans of lager and beer, cigarette packets, condoms and other rubbish. 'You're going to have a field day sifting through this lot, Phil,' he said to the lean stooping man beside him.

  'Yeah, judging by the number of condoms alone we'll be recording the semen traces and DNA of half the male population of Portsmouth,' he muttered through the white mask, which like Horton's was covering his nose and face.

  Horton stepped forward into the tower, but not too far; he didn't want to disturb the scene any more than was necessary. Besides he didn't need to go far to see, in the corner, the hunched body of a man; decomposing and partially consumed by the wildlife. His empty stomach heaved at the sight, never mind the smell. How the lovers could have missed that smell he didn't know, probably too consumed with their passion, he suspected. His stomach didn't only protest at the physical manifestations of the dead man but that his life had ended in such a place and in such a way. This death struck him as more pathetic and cruel than the corpse on the beach; maybe it was because the body lay hunched in a foetal position. Or perhaps it was because of the way it was clothed.

  The purple dress stretched around the rotting flesh, the pale white flowers on it hardly visible for the crawling maggots. The black fishnet stockings and white shoes were the garb of a tart. That a man's life, and it was a man, could be so summarily dismissed and discarded here like this, left like rubbish, filled Horton with anger. It was good to feel anger at something other than Catherine's betrayal.

  Peering down into the contorted face of the man, he recognised him, despite the fact that the maggots, flies, and other insect life, not to mention the rats, had begun to feast on it. It had to be Roger Thurlow. He hardly had time to digest this when a low whistle came from behind him and he turned to find Cantelli standing in the entrance.

  Horton said, 'Lovers found him.' 'Blimey, I bet that put them off their stroke. Is it Thurlow?' Cantelli moved forward and peered across at the body. Horton saw him wince at the gruesome sight. 'What's he doing dressed like that? Thurlow a transvestite!'

  'Perhaps it's the reason why Melissa Thurlow stopped loving him and looked for an affair elsewhere.'

  It seemed to fit. But there was a lot more that didn't. So far no one had given any hint that Thurlow liked playing away from home with other women, or men come to that, though the pornography had indicated that Thurlow had some peculiar tastes when it came to sex. But he was jumping ahead of himself. They had yet to confirm the identity of the victim so he had better save the theorising until later.

  Cantelli glanced at the body, then away again. 'Could he have placed that cord around his own neck and hanged himself to get an erection?'

  'He could have done if there was anything to hang himself by.' Horton tilted his head upwards. If it had been a clear night he would have seen the stars. It had to be strangulation like Culven. He shuddered. 'This place gives me the creeps.'

  'So it should,' Cantelli replied. 'It's called Devil's Tower because of the wild orgies that were held here years ago. It was part of Warlingham House once, ruined in the civil war. One of Charles I's mistresses used to live there. Charlotte told me.'

  'You didn't wake her up just to ask her that?'

  'No. She was already awake like me.' His expression clouded over and Horton guessed they had been worrying about Ellen. He felt for them. When Emma had an infection and raging temperature, and they suspected meningitis, he thought he was going to die with worry.

  Horton turned at the sound of a soft West Country accent greeting the PC outside. A couple of seconds later Dr Clayton appeared at the entrance to the tower. He thought she looked about eighteen in her jeans and sweatshirt before she stepped into the scene suit.

  He said, 'We'll be outside.'

  She nodded, already absorbed in her work.

  'I don't know how she does that job,' Horton said.

  'Me neither,' replied Cantelli with feeling.

  Uniform were arriving with more lights. Horton climbed out of his scene suit and nodded to the forensic photographer who had just arrived.

  Cantelli said, 'The nearest house is about half a mile away, back on the main road to Emsworth. I shouldn't think anyone would have seen anything suspicious.'

  'If the body was brought in that way.'

  He saw Cantelli look at him sharply and explained. 'The sea is not fifty yards away beyond the tower, and on a high tide you can get in quite close to the shore.'

  'You mean someone was on board with Thurlow?'

  'It's possible.'

  'Anyone in mind?'

  Horton thought, Jarrett could have done it.

  He said, 'Let's see what Dr Clayton has to say first.'

  A couple of minutes later she emerged from the tower. Horton nodded the forensic photographer and SOCO in. She pulled off her gloves and threw them into her case. 'I think I can say with some confidence that he's dead, though cause of death is a little difficult at the moment; too much decomposition, and the wildlife have had rather a good go at him.'

  Horton said, 'How long?'

  'Judging by the state of decomposition, and the weather, I would say about six or seven days. I'll know more once I get him on the slab.'

  Horton looked at Cantelli and could see he was thinking along the same lines. This tied in with Thurlow's disappearing act. But if this was Thurlow, and he was almost certain it was, then that would mean he was killed before Culven. Did Culven kill Thurlow so that he could be free to be with Melissa Thurlow? If so, who had killed Culven? He knew what Uckfield would say: Melissa Thurlow. And maybe he was right Horton thought with disappointment. The pornography and the fact that Thurlow's boat was kept near Jarrett could, after all, be simply coincidences. But he felt so sure that something was going on.

  He said, 'Was he killed here?'

  'Sorry, inspector, I can't help you there at the moment.' She paused in divesting herself of the scene suit. 'I'll do the PM tomorrow morning, first thing. Say eight thirty.'

  'Thanks.'

  He caught Cantelli yawning.

  'I'm sorry to have dragged you out, Barney.'

  'I'm glad you did. It was helpful to see him, poor sod.'

  'Go home. I'll stay until the body is removed.'

  'You sure?' Cantelli yawned again.

  'Yes.'

  Horton tried Uckfield's mobile once more, but there was still no answer. He left a message and waited for a while to see if Taylor had anything new to say about the scene of the crime, but there was too much to sift through for instant answers. He saw the body removed to the mortuary, then climbed on his bike and headed home. He tried to get some sleep but soon knew that it was hopeless. At five o'clock he got up, showered and changed and headed into work. He had a feeling it was going to be a very long day but he didn't mind that. Work would distract him.

  By the look of him Uckfield had also been awake all night. The big man looked washed out and hung over. Wherever he had been it had been quite a party, but Horton wasn't foolish enough to say so.

  'Another bloody murder!' Uckfield snarled, pulling out a chair and flopping down opposite Horton across the table in the canteen. 'Just what I need.'

  Horton refrained from saying he guessed that their victim could have done without it too. Instead he said, 'I think it's Thurlow but we won't know for certain until later this morning. I'm sending Somerfield out to Briarly House to warn Mrs Thurlow and stay with her if she needs her, but my experience of that lady is she won't want her there. If it is Thurlow, then he was killed before Culven. So we start again.'

  'Could she have killed them both?' Uckfield asked hopefully, looking up from his black coffee.

  Horton considered this. 'Why kill her lover?'

  'How the hell do I know?' Uckfield snapped.

  Horton raised his eyebrows. He'd only been posing a theoretical question; he didn't expect an answer. Definitely touchy this morning. He sipped his coffee and
remained silent. After a moment Uckfield let out a sigh and his lips twitched in apology but Horton could see how forced it was and how much it cost him to keep control of his temper, which at the best of times had never been even.

  'Who else have we got in the frame?' Horton wasn't going to tell him about Jarrett. He knew what the reaction would be.

  'There must be others, you must have some idea!'

  Horton felt the question to be an accusation of his incompetence. 'We'll need to start digging into Thurlow's affairs,' he replied stiffly.

  'Then you'd better get a big bloody shovel and do it quick.' Uckfield tossed back his coffee and scraped back his chair.

  Horton sat for a moment longer staring into his coffee. Then, after checking into the incident room, he returned to his office where he spent the next few hours sifting through the files on Culven's murder, and reading the summary of statements that Trueman had compiled for him, looking for anything out of the ordinary or some commonality between the two men's deaths. All he could find was that they knew each other, both had been dumped or been killed near the sea, and both had Melissa Thurlow and Colin Jarrett in common.

  He collected Cantelli and went to the mortuary. They found Doctor Clayton in her office. She looked tired.

  'At first glance it appeared he was strangled,' she said. Her office looked as though a tornado had swept through it: papers were scattered across her desk and files littered the floor. A bookcase crammed with heavy volumes filled the wall to his left and behind her hung a large portrait of a man executed in oils. He was in his fifties and in modern dress; Horton thought he looked vaguely familiar. On her desk, apart from the papers, there was a telephone, flat screen computer and three photographs in frames, facing away from him.

  Cantelli asked, 'Do you think he was involved in some kind of sexual game that went wrong?'

  'Auto-erotic asphyxia, deliberately restricting oxygen to the brain to enhance an orgasm? The way he was dressed might suggest that but even if he had indulged in such an activity before his death there is no evidence of semen, or that he had sex with anyone immediately prior to his death. The cord was placed around his neck after his death.'

  'To make us think that he'd been involved in sex games?'

  She shrugged. 'Possibly but he died of asphyxiation like our other victim; this time I would say he's been suffocated with a plastic bag. It was difficult to tell because of the decomposition but I found some evidence of petechial haemorrhages on his shoulder and on the front of the chest, which hadn't been eaten by the wildlife. That's where I would expect to find them if a plastic bag had been placed over his head and held there until he died.'

  'No signs of being knocked out, or beaten about the head?' asked Cantelli, chewing and jotting down notes.

  'None whatsoever. You're wondering how a grown man, and a fairly fit one, could allow someone to put a plastic bag over him and suffocate him?'

  Cantelli nodded. 'Something like that.'

  'Which indicates he might already have been unconscious when it was done,' said Horton.

  She gave him a rueful smile. 'Yes. I've sent his organs for analysis and a blood sample to histology, so if there is any sign of a drug, I'll let you know.'

  'You could try looking for Hypervase. I found a bottle of the tablets on his boat. They'd been prescribed for hypertension. If someone had given him an overdose of those would it have induced a coma?'

  'It certainly would.'

  'Was he killed in the tower, doctor, or was his body dumped there?' Horton repeated the question he'd asked her at the scene.

  'The body had been moved. We're still doing the tests to see if we can pick up any traces of fibre or anything else to indicate where he might have been killed but he wasn't killed in the tower.'

  That bore out what Phil Taylor had told him earlier. The undergrowth in and around the tower, and the disturbance of the debris in the tower, had both shown evidence of something being dragged over it and recently. Taylor couldn't say what but the description he had given Horton of the pattern of disturbance sounded remarkably like a tender.

  'What about time of death?'

  Horton had once been given a lecture in forensic entomology in great detail by an enthusiastic and rather brutal pathologist when he had been a young and very green policeman attending one of his first post mortems. He hoped Gaye Clayton wasn't going to repeat it.

  'Difficult to say exactly, but judging from the insect life feeding on the body, and the lifecycle of the maggots when the body was discovered, I would say they were just beginning the second stage of pupation. So, as I said at the scene, about six to seven days, which puts us somewhere near early hours of Saturday morning.' She swung gently in her chair. 'It's a bit different from the other body, isn't it?'

  Horton eyed her keenly interpreting her meaning. 'You mean this man was killed, transported and hidden, whereas our body on the beach, Michael Culven, was killed not far from where he was found and in full view.'

  She nodded.

  Horton continued. 'Which means it could be two killers, or one killer wanting us to think it is two.'

  'Huh?' Cantelli enquired.

  Horton explained: 'The killing of the first victim had some of the imprints of a disorganised offender: body left in full view and at, or near the death scene; sudden violence in the manner of strangulation; depersonalising the victim by bludgeoning his face. Whereas our second victim was hidden, he was killed elsewhere and moved to the tower — the profile of an organised offender.'

  'Maybe the tower has some significance?' Cantelli ventured.

  Horton didn't think so. He thought it was just a convenient place to dump a body, especially if done so from the sea, in the dark and fog. 'If it is the same killer then I think this murder was carefully planned and that Culven either saw something that could betray the killer and therefore had to be silenced, or Culven's death was used as a delaying tactic. I keep recalling the way Culven was laid out. There has to be some symbolic reference in that.'

  'You mean like on a crucifix?' Dr Clayton said.

  'Yes. Almost as if Culven was a sacrifice.' But sacrifice to what? Their second body might have waited in that tower a long time if it hadn't been for those lovers. An idea was beginning to form in Horton's mind, which he didn't much care for, mainly because it didn't fit with his theories on Jarrett being the possible killer.

  Dr Clayton said, 'If they are connected then your killer must be a clever and imaginative character.'

  Horton agreed. There was no set pattern to this case, no easy profiling. This man was clever enough to conduct two murders that appeared completely different whilst trying to make them look similar by strangulation and the sexual implications.

  The door opened and a young man in a white coat entered. 'The images you wanted, Dr Clayton.' He stretched out a folder.

  She gave him a smile before handing the folder to Horton. 'You'll find dental images, DNA breakdown and fingerprints in there. That should give you enough to identify him. I'll let you know as soon as I have anything on the organ analysis and from histology. Now I'm going to have to throw you out. I'm whacked and I want to get some sleep.'

  Neither of them objected. As soon as they got back to the station Cantelli hurried off to check out the fingerprints with Scientific Services. Horton had barely stepped inside his office when his mobile rang.

  'What the devil do you think you're playing at, Andy, coming here and shouting and swearing at the neighbours?'

  Christ! Catherine. His heart went into overdrive. He hadn't expected this though he might have known Eric and Daphne would go blabbing about his outburst last night. He kicked his door shut and turned his back on the CID office as he said, 'I didn't swear at-'.

  'It's over, Andy. Our marriage is over. Didn't you get the letter from my solicitors?'

  He counted to three, his hands gripping the telephone with such intensity that he thought he might break it. 'How's Emma?' he asked, his voice cold as steel.

  '
Didn't you hear me?'

  'I heard you, Catherine. I asked you how my daughter is?'

  'What do you care?'

  That hurt. He felt as though she had stabbed him as surely as if she had stuck a sheaf of cold steel right through his heart. He hated her for that. He took a deep breath and willed himself to keep his temper in check. He forced himself with every fibre of his being to remain silent. He was rewarded when a few moments later he heard Catherine let out a breath.

  'She's fine,' she said tight-lipped.

  Still he remained silent. There was nothing to say. He pictured his daughter with this Ed and felt physical pain.

  'Andy, are you still there?'

  'Yes, Catherine.'

  The tone of his voice must have communicated something to her because when she next spoke her voice wasn't quite so sharp.

  'Look, Andy, it won't do any good you coming over here and trying to break the door down. We've got to move on with our lives.'

  'Like you have with Ed?' He spoke calmly but he felt far from calm. He heard her suck in her breath.

  'I have found someone else, yes. He's… well, we're friends.'

  'Lovers?'

  'That's-'

  'Nothing to do with me? It is when it affects my daughter. I want to know what kind of man is sleeping in the room next to her. What sort of man is playing with her, touching her.'

  'Andy, please this is-'

  'Getting us nowhere?' He heard her sigh heavily.

  'The sooner we get this sorted, the sooner we can move on with our lives.'

  'I can't move on with mine until I can prove to you and Emma that I did not rape or even sleep with that girl.'

  'And you think that will make everything all right?' she snapped. 'It's gone too far for that.'

  He took a breath. 'Not for me it hasn't. You're still my wife and Emma's still my daughter.'

  'Andy…'

  He heard the pleading in her voice but he ignored it. 'I'm not going to let another man have Emma. She's all I've got.'

  'Andy-.'

  But he rang off.