A Killing Coast dah-7 Page 6

  FIVE

  An hour later he was pulling up outside a tall Victorian whitewashed house perched high above the small seaside town of Ventnor, nestling under the downs. On the staggered terraces beneath it, leading down into the small bay, Horton could see the lights of the houses in the gathering dusk and beyond them the great black expanse of the English Channel, with a faint light out to sea of a container ship. He climbed the steps to the front door wondering if Mr Hazleton had his eyes peeled to his giant telescope.

  Extracting the key Hannah Yately had given them, Horton stepped into a spacious and clean hall with a broad twisting staircase facing him. There were two doors leading off the hall and one further down it past the staircase, but there was no sound from behind any of them and no sign of any of the occupants. His eyes travelled to his left to what looked like a stack of lockers in a sports centre, except these were numbered, up to seven, and each had a wide slit for a postman to slot the mail in. He wished he had Yately’s key to it but it would either have to be forced open or they’d get the key from the landlord tomorrow.

  Number seven was, as he had suspected, on the top floor. It was approached via the last flight of steps, much narrower than the others, but carpeted in the same green cord. It was the only flat on the floor and was evidently in the roof space. With a quickening heartbeat he registered there was no sign of a forced entry but then there didn’t need to be if Yately was still inside it with his keys. And if that were so then who was in the mortuary and why had he been carrying Yately’s key ring, minus the keys?

  Horton stretched his hands into his latex gloves, and taking the second key he inserted it in the lock and pushed open the door. Silence greeted him and with relief he noted there was no smell of death. He found himself in a small lobby with two doors either side of it and a door directly ahead, which was the bathroom. In it he found a comb, which he dropped into an evidence bag for DNA and fingerprint comparison.

  He wasn’t here to search the flat, only to satisfy himself that Colin Yately wasn’t inside it ill or dead, and a swift glance in the room to his left, which revealed a bedroom, and the room on the right, which led into the lounge with the kitchen off, confirmed to him that Yately wasn’t here, and was therefore probably in the mortuary. He turned back into the lobby and re-entered the bedroom.

  It was shaped like an inverted ‘L’ with a window on the far side facing him. The room wasn’t very large, only about nine feet wide and about fifteen feet long. It was tidy with no evidence that it had been disturbed in any way. The single bed was made up with a navy-blue counterpane and opposite it was a low chest with several books on it, some about navy ships, others on local history. In front of the window was a telescope, but not like Victor Hazleton’s antique one or his ultra modern white contraption; this one was mounted on a tripod and it was the kind of telescope that Horton was more familiar with.

  Without touching it he bent down, and closing one eye, peered through it. It seemed to be pointing at the small marina of Ventnor Haven, which he’d come into earlier that morning on the police launch. Yately probably used it to watch the passing ships. If Horton combined that with the subject matter of some of the books on the chest of drawers did it point to some kind of subversive activity? Hardly, he thought, smiling to himself at his imagination, before another thought struck him: had Yately been recruited to Project Neptune? But if he had Bliss would have recognized his name. But then she hadn’t stopped to ask him about the body, and he’d not had the chance to tell her. He thought it far more likely that while some people went in for trainspotting Yately had been into ship-spotting.

  Straightening up, he supposed that Yately could have used the telescope for spying on people in the houses below. Perhaps Yately was a peeping Tom and that was the new hobby he’d hinted at to his daughter. But binoculars would have been more suitable for that activity and there didn’t seem to be any here. The door under the eaves led into a wardrobe. Inside were Yately’s clothes but no dresses. And rifling through the chest of drawers he found only male clothing.

  Horton picked up the phone beside Yately’s bed and keyed in 1471 to get the number of the last caller. The call was timed at three minutes past two that day, when Hannah said she had last tried her father before reporting him missing at the police station, and the number checked with that of Hannah Yately’s mobile phone.

  In the lounge, just as in the bedroom, there was restricted headroom because of the angle of the roof and Horton had to incline his head to avoid knocking it against the rafters as he crossed to the kitchenette to the right of an old, small wrought iron fireplace. The room was stuffy and felt claustrophobic. He wouldn’t like to be up here in summer. Give him the boat and the open sea any day, he thought, opening the fridge. There was milk and cheese in it, which were beginning to go off. This must have been one of the servant’s rooms years ago, he guessed, probably a large cupboard or perhaps another bedroom where the lowliest of servants had slept.

  On the desk underneath the window in the lounge, Horton picked up a silver-framed photograph of Colin Yately with his daughter beside him. It was recent; taken about six months ago he’d say, on the promenade at Ventnor. Horton studied Yately’s smiling features, but just as in the interview room when Hannah had handed him a photograph of her father, he couldn’t equate it with what he’d seen on the slab in the mortuary. This time, though, he noted the receding light-brown hair, the lines around the mouth and the dark-brown eyes, which were like his daughter’s. Yately looked a fairly innocuous sort of man. It was easy to imagine him in the uniform of a postman. But not in a woman’s dress.

  Slipping the photograph out of its frame, Horton placed it between the pages of his notebook. He didn’t think Hannah would mind, and even though she’d already given them a photograph he thought this more recent one would be better for circulating to the media if they needed to trace Yately’s last movements. He wondered if there were other photographs or an album about the place. Perhaps in the desk. On it was a large lined notepad with neat, thin handwriting. Horton popped the fountain pen beside it into another bag, again to compare fingerprints with the dead man’s, before his eyes fell on the notes. Yately had written:

  In the early 1800s, Ventnor was a hamlet of thatched fishermen’s cottages with an old mill, an inn and a couple of humble dwellings; by 1838 it had grown to three hundred and fifty inhabitants.

  Horton flicked through the pages of writing, about fifty in total, and saw that Yately’s interest was not only in local history but in the chines, creeks and coves on the east coast of the island. Perhaps this was what had given him the buzz which he had hinted at to his daughter. Could he have been on one of these cliffs when he’d fallen into the sea? But he was back to that damn dress again. And if Yately had gone out for a walk why not take his keys?

  There was no sign of a suicide note anywhere. It was time to leave, but before he did he jotted down details of Yately’s GP and dentist, and found three photograph albums in the desk. He didn’t have time to study the pictures so he placed the albums into a bag. He wondered if he’d find a photograph of the former Mrs Yately or another female wearing that patterned dress. Locking up he got the impression of a solitary man, but not necessarily a lonely one.

  Tomorrow they’d have the results of the autopsy and then make a decision on how the investigation should proceed if indeed there was an investigation. On the ferry he took the photograph albums up to the lounge with him. In a seat by the window, with a coffee and toasted bacon sandwich in front of him, he began to look through them but was distracted by thoughts of all the photographs he’d taken of Catherine and Emma. Catherine had probably lit a ruddy great bonfire of the photographs of him when she’d kicked him out a year ago, but there must be some left of him and Emma together and he’d like to have them. All he had were two pictures of his daughter, one of which he kept on his boat, the other on his desk.

  His mind jumped back to his childhood. He couldn’t remember his mother taking photo
graphs of him but surely she must have done. So where were they? Had they been destroyed when the flat had been cleared out? Who had cleared their flat? His mind flicked to Adrian Stanley and what he wasn’t telling him about Jennifer. Checking his watch Horton thought it was too late to telephone Stanley, but he would tomorrow.

  He turned his mind back to the photographs in front of him. There were many pictures of Hannah Yately through the ages and of her proud and doting father. There were a few pictures of a woman who must be Hannah’s mother, wearing modern clothes over the years, though to Horton they were slightly on the tarty side, and she was either looking bored or posing into camera, but there was no sign of the maxi-dress with the flowers on it. There was an older woman who could have been Yately’s mother and Hannah’s grandmother. Was she still alive, Horton wondered? If so, perhaps she’d recognize the dress. But Hannah hadn’t mentioned her so he guessed she was dead. Still, they’d check.

  As the ferry slid into port he eyed Glenn’s superyacht lit up like a giant advertisement in Piccadilly Circus. He recalled Avril’s jewellery, hoping it was safely locked away at night, before his mind flitted to more pleasing thoughts of her shapely figure and her smile. He speculated over her relationship with her husband and the brief information Mike Danby had given him, and decided to run a few checks on Russell Glenn before meeting him on Friday night.

  He headed straight for his boat, deciding that the items he’d collected from Yately’s flat could be sent to the Fingerprint Bureau tomorrow. It was late, it had been a hectic day, and he hoped that sleep would come easily. But it didn’t. His head was too full of Adrian Stanley, of Avril and Russell Glenn, and of Jennifer Horton.

  Tuesday

  The seagulls were squealing in the harbour when he woke the next morning with a muggy head and with a determination to concentrate on getting to the bottom of Colin Yately’s death. Dr Clayton would have the autopsy results today which might help to make things a little clearer.

  By the time Cantelli returned from the ferry and hovercraft ticket offices Horton had telephoned Hannah Yately and told her what he’d found in her father’s flat, which was nothing, and what he’d taken away. He said he’d let her know the moment they had positive confirmation and prayed she wouldn’t ask him why he wanted the photograph albums. She didn’t.

  Cantelli plonked himself in the seat across Horton’s desk. ‘There’s no record of Colin Yately travelling on either the Fastcat ferry, the car ferry or the Hovercraft but he could have paid by cash. However, no one I spoke to in the ticket office and none of the marshalling staff recognized him, so it’s likely he never reached here.’

  ‘Alive that is. He almost made it dead,’ Horton said sombrely. ‘I didn’t find any evidence in his flat to suggest he was into cross-dressing.’

  ‘Perhaps he dressed up elsewhere because he was scared his daughter might find the clothes at his flat. He could have used a beach hut or been at a house near the sea or on a boat.’

  ‘Alone or with someone?’

  Cantelli shrugged. ‘If he was with someone who shared his passion, he might be afraid or too ashamed to come forward. He could be married. Yately ended up accidentally in the sea leaving his keys and other identification in his trousers.’

  ‘But why remove the keys from that fob?’

  ‘Perhaps he’d put them on a new fob some time ago, only Hannah never noticed. He didn’t want to discard the fob with the picture of his daughter in it because it was too precious to him, and that he always kept on him no matter what.’

  Horton glanced at the photograph of Emma on his desk. Yes, he could understand that. Yately’s daughter might be all that the poor man had had left and he’d needed the picture to remind himself he wasn’t alone. Or was that how he felt, he thought gloomily? Only he didn’t carry a picture of Emma. He’d learnt in the job a long time ago to have few personal effects on him in case they could be used against him, or destroyed or stolen.

  He wondered how soon they’d get a preliminary report from Dr Clayton. He said, ‘Ask Walters if he’s managed to speak to Yately’s dentist and his GP.’ Horton had also detailed Walters to get Yately’s comb and the fountain pen over to the Fingerprint Bureau. Thankfully, Walters had reported that there had been no further house burglaries overnight. Perhaps the extra patrols had deterred the robbers, but they couldn’t keep them up. Horton called up all they had on the case on screen and began to trawl through it, looking for anything that Walters and Cantelli had missed and which could give them a hint of who it might be. He found nothing but sooner or later their burglar would slip up; unfortunately that meant another householder having to suffer the misery of being robbed.

  He picked up the disc containing the CCTV footage of the blue van seen at the marina in Gosport and popped it into his computer. He saw that it covered the period from eight in the morning until when Horton had collected it just before one yesterday afternoon. A handful of cars arrived between eight o’clock and nine, and some of them belonged to the staff judging by the direction in which they headed after alighting. Two other cars entered: a top of the range BMW and a Range Rover, then Horton swung into the marina on his Harley at nine twenty-one. A few minutes later came the muddy blue van. Horton frowned. He didn’t care for the closeness of the timing, or for the fact he could swear it was the same van that had been parked outside Stanley’s apartment at Lee-on-the-Solent.

  He reached for his phone. He wanted to know if Stanley had seen the van that morning or at any other time. But there was no answer. Horton watched the blue van pull away ten minutes later. He sat back concerned. Had it been following him? He hadn’t seen it on his way to Stanley’s flat or anywhere else since yesterday morning, and certainly not at his marina. And why should someone follow him? Unless they didn’t want him talking to Stanley, and there was only one reason for that, but before he could reason any further the trilling of his phone sliced through his thoughts.

  It was Dr Clayton. At last!

  ‘It’s a suspicious death, Inspector,’ she announced grimly and peremptorily.

  Horton’s heart skipped a beat and he cursed silently. It was the last thing he wanted to hear. ‘Tell me,’ he urged.

  ‘The presence of bleeding in the cranium suggests he was struck violently before entering the water. I found foam in the trachea and main bronchi and evidence of bruising in the neck and chest, which indicates he was alive when submersion occurred. Of course, further tests might confirm the presence of a drug or drink but I don’t think it likely, because I found something else that shouldn’t be there. There was evidence of marks on the wrists and ankles, and I found fragments of a fibre embedded in both, and in his mouth. At some point your body was bound and gagged.’

  Horton swore to himself. His heart sank. ‘But he wasn’t bound when he was found,’ he said, thinking aloud.

  ‘He wasn’t, and neither was he in the water long enough for any restrictions to have rotted. The ties could have become loose while he was in the sea but I’d be very surprised if they had, and even more surprised if the gag had worked its way off. He was only in the sea for about twelve hours, no more than eighteen hours certainly.’

  ‘But you said-’

  ‘That he’d been dead for four or five days. And he has. Decomposition was advanced, which is surprising at this time of the year when the sea temperature is still quite cold, barely reaching forty-seven Fahrenheit, and the colder the water the slower the decomposition. There was also no evidence of adipocere; that’s the yellowish-white substance composed of fatty acids and soaps that forms after death on the fatty parts of the body like the abdomen wall and buttocks. It protects against decomposition.’

  With dread, Horton said, ‘You’re saying that he was killed, his body left somewhere for a few days, then it was untied before being dumped at sea sometime between Sunday night and early Monday morning?’

  ‘Worse.’

  Shit. What could be worse, he groaned silently.

  ‘The evidence points
to the fact that the gag was removed but not the wrist and ankle restrictions. While he was bound he was submerged, hence the bruising in the neck and chest and the foam in the trachea as the poor man struggled to free himself. Then came exhaustion, followed by coughing and vomiting, loss of consciousness and death by drowning some minutes later.’

  Horton drew in a deep breath. His gut tightened as Gaye continued.

  ‘I think his captor knocked him out, tied him up and gagged him. When the victim regained consciousness his captor dropped him into the sea, removing the gag but not the wrist and ankle restraints. When the poor man eventually drowned, your killer hauled him out, untied him and left him somewhere on land, which is supported by the patterns of animal and bird life eating into the corpse. The body was then either washed out to sea or taken out to sea. The dress acted as a buoyancy aid allowing the body to float rather than sink as it would normally have done.’

  Did the killer realize that or had he misjudged it, Horton wondered, his mind reeling from Dr Clayton’s findings and seeing again that small ordinary flat and that average, ordinary man in the photograph. He’d seen nothing to indicate that Colin Yately should be bound and tossed into the sea to die. Should he have looked harder? Had he missed something? Clearly he must have done. To make sure that it was Colin Yately’s body, he said, ‘Can you confirm if he ever suffered a broken left leg?’

  ‘Yes, and he’d had surgery on his right knee. He’s about late fifties.’

  That seemed to seal it but just for good measure, Dr Clayton added, ‘Walters emailed me details of Colin Yately’s dentist, it’s why I’ve taken longer to get back to you. I wanted to check. I can confirm from examining the dental records on line that they match with the victim. It’s Colin Yately all right.’