Dead Man's Wharf Read online

  He drew up sharply at the door to the CID office. DC Lee was at his desk and it looked as though she was searching it. As though some instinct had alerted her, she glanced up and saw him. He gave her top marks for not starting guiltily. She simply straightened up and stared at him enquiringly as if she had been waiting for him.

  'Looking for something?' he asked casually, though his guts were in a tight knot.

  She didn't bat an eyelid and there wasn't the faintest sign of a guilty flush on her face. 'The case notes on the Peter Ebury robbery have just come in, guv. I was about to leave you a note.' She gestured to the manila folder in front of her on his desk. On it was stuck a blank yellow Post-it note.

  He didn't believe her. Had she been skimming through Peter Ebury's file making sure it was all there or had she taken something from it? Though if she had extracted something he couldn't see where she could possibly have concealed it without it showing. His phone rang giving her the chance to slip out. It was Sergeant Elkins of the Marine Unit.

  'Perry Jackson's boat is still at Hythe Marina and it hasn't been out for at least a month.'

  So if he did kill his partner then he didn't use his own boat to ferry the body or to take Farnsworth to Oldham's Wharf. He watched Lee leave the CID office.

  'I've checked with both Sparkes and Northney Marinas on Hayling Island,' Elkins continued. 'but nothing went out from there last night.'

  'OK. Thanks.'

  He rang off and glanced down at his desk. What had Lee been about to write on the Post-it note. Nothing, he guessed. It was just a ploy in case she got caught in his office. She must already have had access to the Peter Ebury file, so there would have been no need for her to take a sneaky look at it. And if it wasn't that, then what had she been hoping to find in his office?

  He stiffened. There was one file that wasn't here but on his boat which had a connection with the Rest Haven or rather with Irene Ebury. The missing person's file on his mother. Could she have been interested in that? But there was so little information in it. Certainly nothing to worry the Intelligence Directorate, apart from its connection with Irene.

  There was a tap on his door and he looked up to see Lee.

  'I thought you'd gone home,' he said, surprised and annoyed.

  'Just on my way, guv.' She hesitated. 'Are we still looking into the deaths of Irene and Peter Ebury? Only I could take a look at those statements from the home tomorrow morning, and see if there are any discrepancies. It could still tie in with Daniel's death. I could also check if Farnsworth had any connections with the Rest Haven.'

  So it was the nursing home. And she had to come back to make sure he hadn't forgotten it.

  He had to know why. 'Cantelli's already done that. There's no connection.' She didn't look disappointed or annoyed that he hadn't kept her informed, but then he hadn't expected her to show any emotion. 'There's something else though I'd like you to do. Interview Marion Keynes. Put her under pressure. I still think she stole Irene's belongings.' There was no hint in Lee's eyes that she knew otherwise. 'And get the addresses of a couple of the residents' relatives and talk to them. Do they have any concerns about the place? See what you can ferret out.'

  'Yes, guv.' She made to leave but paused at the door. Turning back, she said, 'Are you going to Daniel's funeral tomorrow? I was wondering if I could come along. Two sets of eyes might be better than one.'

  He held her gaze for a moment. All he could see was a genuine interest in following up a gut feeling. He said, 'I'll see you at the crematorium at ten thirty.'

  FIFTEEN

  Thursday, 8.45 a.m.

  'Farnsworth was a pain in the arse,' Ryan Oldham said.

  Horton was sitting across Oldham's desk in the man's shambolic office. It was teeming with papers and littered with dirt and gravel. The rain beat against the roof of the Portakabin and the wind whistled through the thin walls, killing the meagre amount of heat that the narrow storage heaters were limping out. Oldham, wrapped in a giant waterproof windcheater and wearing Hunters so filthy that Horton could hardly see they were green, said, 'Farnsworth was a publicity-centred prick who didn't care who he upset or ruined just as long as it got his ugly mug in the newspapers. And if someone bumped him off then he had it coming to him. He cost me money, not to mention a lot of hassle and I can't say I'm crying buckets over the man's death.'

  'You mean the exploitation of the seabed.'

  Oldham snorted. It was like an elephant sneezing, thought Horton, except without the snot.

  'Exploitation my arse! Did he live in a tent? No, the bugger lived in a ruddy great house built of bricks, and I bet his driveway was block-paved. Where the hell does he think the sand and gravel not to mention concrete come from to build that, the moon? If we don't dredge the seabed then we have to extract it from the land, but no doubt being a bloody diver that's what he would have preferred. And then we'd have all the NIMBYs on our backs, not to mention the tree huggers and planet-saving weirdos.' Leaning forward, Oldham continued, 'And don't let all that TV crap fool you about the bed of the Solent being one big archaeological find. OK, so there are wrecks there, but there is more rubbish than wrecks. There are bombs, armaments, munitions and God alone knows what else. The navy have dumped there for years, not to mention what the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force chucked out. And who cleans that up? Muggins here, that's who.'

  Oldham stabbed his big chest so hard that Horton almost winced. He must be made of iron.

  'It costs me a fortune, especially as I have to call in the bomb disposal squad and you lot every time a dredger returns with a bomb. And I have to close down operations, sometimes for hours. That's why I've had to go to the expense of building that bloody bomb shelter so the bloody things can be transported there and defused without causing too much disruption to my business. If my customers don't get their deliveries, they go elsewhere. Do I get compensation for that? Like buggery I do.'

  Horton opened his mouth to speak, but Oldham was in full flow.

  'Everything we do is above board. Always has been but Farnsworth wanted a story and the press lapped it up. Now the man's dead it's started all over again. Have you seen those tossers out there? You'd think this fucking awful weather would have put them off, but no, there they are, huddled under umbrellas with their tongues hanging out, their eyes popping and their bloody cameras and Dictaphones stuck in your face every five minutes. Can't you move them on?'

  Horton had fought his way through them throwing 'no comments' in the air like confetti at a wedding. 'We've got an officer on the gate.'

  'Oh, yeah, I forgot that,' Oldham replied facetiously. 'The bastards want to know why Farnsworth was killed on my premises. Did it have anything to do with our former row? Were the police investigating me? Jesus, as if it isn't bad enough losing business because the prick decided to get himself killed on my land, without being accused of bumping him off. Now you show up with your great big fat feet pointing the finger at me.'

  Horton excused the mixed metaphor. 'No one's pointing the finger at you, Mr Oldham,' he said equably, and felt like adding that he didn't have big flat feet. 'You're just helping us—'

  Oldham's roar and the slamming of his hand upon his desk made the whole building shake. 'Don't say with your inquiries. That makes it sound like you've already made up your mind I killed the slippery sod.'

  'I was going to say by giving us useful background information,' Horton replied quietly. He felt there was something more here to justify Oldham's fury.

  Oldham lunged forward. Horton held his position and kept his gaze firmly fixed on Oldham's face.

  'I didn't want him dead. I just wanted him to bugger off and pick on someone else.'

  Horton said nothing.

  After a moment Oldham sat back with a sigh that was like a strong south-westerly but not so damp. He added, with all the force of an announcement on cup final day at Pompey football ground, 'Obviously he did pick on someone else only this time he got more than he bargained for.'

  '
Any idea who?'

  'No.'

  Horton held Oldham's gaze and noted the intelligence in the piercing blue-grey eyes. He wouldn't like to cross Ryan Oldham either in business or personal life. He let the silence hang for a moment, hearing the telephone ringing in the adjoining Portakabin and someone saying, 'The police are with him now. He's not in a very good mood, best tell him later.' Tell him what? Horton wondered. Whatever it was he hoped he'd be several miles away by then.

  'Did Farnsworth ever come here, before his death, that is?'

  'No.'

  'Did you ever threaten him?'

  'No.'

  'Meet him?'

  'Once and that was more than I could stomach. I was at a Chamber of Commerce lunch at the Queen's Hotel. I don't usually go to them, but this one I did, more's the pity. It was part of a marketing drive by some whiz-kid I engaged for six months. Waste of fucking time.'

  'When was this?' Horton asked.

  'Last August.'

  He thought back to what Daisy had told him about Farnsworth's row with Oldham – that had been in August.

  'Do you practise the martial arts, Mr Oldham? Karate, that kind of thing?'

  Oldham stared at Horton as if he'd just announced he was going to take his clothes off and dance naked round the yard.

  'Do I what?'

  No, thought Horton, stupid question, but then it was his job to ask stupid questions as well as intelligent ones because sometimes the stupid ones got you the answers.

  Oldham said, 'Look at the size of me. Do I need some namby-pamby oriental crap to fight my way out of trouble?'

  Horton would hardly call it namby-pamby, but he took Oldham's point. This man would simply crush someone. And if he was going to kill, then he certainly wouldn't have done so in his own backyard and arranged the body so meticulously.

  Horton held Oldham's hostile glare and said evenly, 'I need to eliminate you and then concentrate on finding who did kill him.'

  'When you find him give him my regards.'

  Horton kept his expression impassive. After a short pause, he added, 'What was the row with Farnsworth about? And don't tell me there was no row or that it was over raping the seabed because I won't believe you.' It was like playing a game of poker, Horton thought. Oldham was eyeing him as though he was trying to judge whether he could bluff his way out of this.

  After a moment Oldham sniffed and then thrust his sixteen-stone bulk across the desk. His face was so close to Horton that he could see every blemish and every line on it.

  'If this goes any further than this room or reaches those pricks out there, you're dead meat, Horton, understand?'

  'I'll overlook the fact that you've threatened a senior police officer. Go on.'

  'The row was over that tosser's approaches towards my wife, Mavis. Yeah, the bastard made a play for her.'

  'When? How?' Horton asked surprised. He had no idea what Mavis looked like, but he imagined someone so completely different to Daisy and Corinna that it was difficult for him to think that Farnsworth would have wasted so much as a winning smile on her. Then he silently scolded himself. He'd once admonished PC Johns for stereotyping people and jumping to conclusions based on his own prejudices and here he was doing the same.

  'It was at that stupid Chamber of Commerce lunch that I told you about in August. Farnsworth showed up. Fuck knows why but he made a beeline for Mavis and started chatting her up.'

  Horton didn't think Mavis would be very flattered to hear her husband say that. His eyes quickly searched Oldham's desk and cabinet tops, but there was no photograph of her, or anyone, only pictures of trucks.

  'I thought, OK, it's only a lunch, let the bastard have his fun. Mavis could handle him. If it boosted her ego then no harm done, except I discovered he called her the next day and asked her to meet him. She told him to sod off, politely of course, but that didn't suit the scumbag. He kept on pestering her, Mavis told me. I phoned him and told him to piss off or I'd crush his balls. He got the message.'

  And that must have been the telephone conversation that Daisy had overheard. He said, 'As a result of which Farnsworth said he would get even.'

  'He started telling the press I was a profiteering capitalist bastard.'

  'And did you threaten him again because of that? Did you arrange to meet him here on Tuesday night? Did you kill him?'

  Oldham looked as if he was about to explode. His eyes were hot with rage. Horton remained still and silent. Then after a moment the fire went out of him. Steadily he said, 'I didn't kill him and I didn't meet him here. Someone's used those press stories to dump his

  body in my yard to implicate me.'

  'So who hates you enough to do that?'

  'Hates me?' Oldham looked surprised, then scowled. 'I guess I've got a few enemies, but I doubt they'd go to the trouble of killing that jumped-up idiot just to get even with me.'

  'Why not? It's losing you money, maybe that's what they wanted.'

  Oldham hauled himself up, shaking his head. He reminded Horton of a cross between a bull mastiff and a St Bernard dog. 'The type of men I know who'd like to see me ruined wouldn't have the brains to work that out. They'd come armed with baseball bats and smash the place up. I reckon your killer read that stuff in the paper and thought they'd sidetrack you lot into thinking I did it, just to waste your time, and I've already wasted enough of mine.' Oldham crossed to the door and flung it open.

  Horton didn't always oblige but on this occasion he thought Oldham was correct. He was wasting his time here.

  After fighting his way through the reporters, he climbed on the Harley, but instead of heading for the crematorium he turned left and followed the short road south towards the sailing centre.

  Kicking down the stand, he gazed up at the modern glass building with its tower like a truncated lighthouse giving high visibility across all aspects of Langstone Harbour. Pity it had been dark when Farnsworth had been killed and no one here to witness it. But then that was why the killer had chosen such an isolated location late at night.

  Stepping past the row of dinghies and canoes, he made for the shore, where he turned northwards and after fifty yards came to a steel-wired fence and a rusted sign that told him he was at Oldham's Wharf and he could go no further. The fence didn't go all the way down to the lowest tidemark and if he had been wearing waders maybe he could have squelched his way in the mud directly to the quayside. Though he wouldn't like to have tried it.

  He squinted through the slanting rain at Langstone Harbour. On a high tide and with a good engine no one would have seen or heard their killer come here by boat. Oldham's security lights would also have been on to show the killer the way. There were no uniformed patrol officers or guard dogs, though the sign said there were. Dennings had confirmed that. And the killer knew this because he had either studied the place, visited it or worked there. Ian Keynes would know everything about Oldham's Wharf.

  Horton returned to the sailing centre and after showing his warrant card retrieved a list of boat owners and members. Scanning it quickly he couldn't see Manners, Lester, Jackson, Kirkwood or Keynes on the list. He tucked it inside his jacket and headed for the crematorium.

  It was the right sort of weather for a funeral, he thought, wet, windy and thoroughly depressing. The kind of day where you never got to switch off the lights in your house and the chill and damp seeped right through to your bones.

  His mind returned to the case notes on Peter Ebury. Last night, over a hastily prepared meal, he had read them. Two things had jumped out at him. The first, why was the armoured vehicle with the store's takings in a country lane when Ebury and Mayfield had held it up? It was off the beaten track and not on the route they should have taken to their next collection. The driver had said that he wanted a pee, but there were plenty of other places to stop for that along the top of Portsdown Hill. And whoever had heard of a security guard stopping for a pee with a van load of money?

  The second point was why had it been so easy for Peter to get cau
ght? If he had been as clever and manipulative as the deputy governor of Kingston Prison had said, then why hadn't he figured out a better escape route?

  Ebury had pleaded not guilty, a charge that could hardly stick when discovered with a car full of money. But Ebury's story had been that he and Mayfield had been in the process of stealing the car when the police arrived. They'd walked from a pub in the nearby village of Clanfield and, seeing the car abandoned in the lay-by on the A3 to London, intended to steal it to get back to Portsmouth. They claimed to have known nothing about the money until the police showed up. No one in any of the pubs could give them an alibi and Thomson, the other security guard, had recognized their voices. The gun was found near the lay-by with Ebury's prints on it and there was gun residue on his hands. Mayfield had confessed under questioning, and pleaded guilty. Only then had Ebury changed his plea to guilty. Case closed...except it left a bad taste in Horton's mouth.