Blood on the Sand Page 8

  Uckfield exhaled. 'Bloody hell, you've got more theories than my wife's got shoes. All right. Let me know what you come up with.'

  'And you let me know the moment you get anything on Thea Carlsson.'

  Uckfield promised he would.

  On that note, Horton returned to his boat, changed into his leathers, and set out for Arina Sutton's home: Scanaford House.

  SEVEN

  Thursday midday

  It was old. Georgian, Horton reckoned, drawing to a halt in front of the brick and stone house that resembled a minor stately home. The tree-lined driveway must have been almost a mile long. Whatever Arina Sutton's background it was certainly one of wealth. The house had to be worth a million pounds plus, and it was a million miles away from the cramped flat in a council tower block that had once been his childhood home. He told himself he wasn't resentful, but who the hell was he kidding?

  Climbing off the Harley, Horton removed his helmet, glad the rain had finally ceased, though the darkening sky threatened more. He pushed his finger on the brass bell beside a solid oak door and ran a critical eye over the façade. The place had a shut-up, forlorn feel to it and judging by the flaky paintwork and grass growing out of the drainpipes was in need of some tender loving care. He wondered who he was he going to upset by calling here and asking questions about Arina's death. A grieving mother or father? A sister or brother? Whoever they were, clearly they weren't at home.

  There was no letter box for him to peer through, only a black-painted post box fixed to the outside wall. He flicked it open. Empty.

  Disappointed, he made his way around the left-hand side of house where the lawn gave way to a lake about the size of the one on Southsea seafront, on which they hired out paddle boats. Beyond this was a small copse of elms and some other trees whose species he didn't know. The sweeping lawns and the lake made him feel like a bit-part actor in Brideshead Revisited. Perhaps Arina Sutton had married well before meeting Owen Carlsson and had got a whacking great divorce settlement, which was more than Catherine was going to get. Her pos ition as marketing director of her father's international marine company paid well, and 'daddy' would always see she was all right. Horton reckoned that although he'd have to give her the house or his pension, he was damned if he was going to give her both.

  The gardens were deserted except for the odd crow and magpie. Irritated that his journey had been a waste of time, he continued to the back of the house, but got the same story – closed for business. The bereaved had obviously departed to seek comfort elsewhere.

  His attention was arrested by the sound of a car pulling up. Great. Now he might get some answers. He hurried back to the front where, with a slight quickening of pulse, he saw a dark coloured saloon car before telling himself that half the country owned dark-coloured saloons. His eyes swivelled to the lean, grey-haired man wearing cowboy boots, a ponytail and leather flying jacket who was peering at Horton's Harley with suspicion rather than admiration. At the sound of Horton's footsteps he looked up with hostile eyes and a scowling countenance.

  'Who are you?' he demanded aggressively.

  Horton would like to have asked him the same question, but he said, 'I'm looking for a relative of Arina Sutton.'

  Horton wondered if he was Arina's brother, or husband. At a push he supposed he could possibly be her father if he'd had her young, say at eighteen. Arina had been forty when she'd died and this man was somewhere in his late fifties. He didn't look the type to own this pile but then he could be a former rock star, or even a drug dealer for all Horton knew.

  'There aren't any relatives,' the man said warily.

  Clearly not related then. Maybe he thinks I'm a burglar, or worse, an estate agent. Horton didn't trust the skittering eyes and narrow mouth. And he wasn't sure he believed the bit about there being no relatives.

  'Were you a friend of Arina's?' he probed, eyeing him steadily.

  The man's eyes refused to meet Horton's. 'I knew her father, Sir Christopher Sutton. He died just before Christmas. Cancer.'

  So no suspicious circumstances there, though ponytail oozed suspicion. Horton recalled what Dr Clayton had said. It had to be the same Sir Christopher. Time for introductions.

  With a smile he stretched out his hand. 'Andy Horton.'

  Ponytail eyed it as though it contained a grenade before sniffing and taking it briefly and damply. 'Roy Danesbrook.'

  Resisting the urge to wipe his palm down the side of his trousers, Horton said, 'Isn't there anyone I can speak to about Arina?'

  'Depends what you want to know.'

  What you're doing here for a start, thought Horton, getting rather fed up with Danesbrook's evasiveness and recognizing the same defensive tone he'd heard many times in an interview room. Although he'd never met Sir Christopher he couldn't believe that such an eminent man could have been friends with so shifty a bastard. He wished he was here in his official capacity as a police officer, then he could have been as blunt as he wanted. But maybe he could be.

  'I want to know why Owen Carlsson is dead,' he said briskly.

  Danesbrook's eyes widened. His lips twitched nervously.

  'I take it you knew Owen,' Horton pressed.

  'Not really. I saw him at Arina's funeral. Did he kill himself ?'

  'Why should he do that?'

  'I just thought . . .' Danesbrook shifted and fiddled with his ponytail.

  'When was her funeral?' Horton asked, sharper this time.

  'Tuesday before last. She's buried alongside her father. They're in the churchyard.' He jerked his head to his right. 'The last plot before the graveyard opens out into the new section. Sir Christopher is with his late wife and Arina next to them. Look, I've got to go.'

  But you've only just got here. As if reading his mind Danesbrook said, 'I only came up to the house because I saw your bike from the road and wondered who you were.'

  Oh yeah? Horton didn't believe that for a second. 'Did Owen say anything to you about Arina's death?'

  'No, nothing. I'm late. Sorry, can't help you.'

  He watched Danesbrook slither into the car, jerk it round and skid away, but not before he noticed a dent in the front passenger door. He reached for his phone and relayed Danesbrook's registration number to Cantelli, adding, 'Find out all you can about him, and who formally identified Arina's body. Ask Trueman to get some background information on Arina Sutton and her father, Sir Christopher, and find out who their solicitor is. Any news on Thea?'

  'No. Sorry.'

  Horton had hoped but not expected. He crossed to the church. Now that he was here he might as well take a look at the graves. He doubted they'd reveal anything, but no harm in hoping. He wondered why his news about Owen Carlsson's death had so rattled Danesbrook.

  He pushed open the wrought-iron gate and eyed the church. Saxon, he reckoned. Not that he was an expert but he'd once had a girlfriend who was and she'd dragged him around the churches of southern England in the hope that she'd educate him. He'd gone in the hope that he'd get his wicked way with her, which he hadn't. The romance – though he could hardly call it that – had fizzled out somewhere in Dorset.

  He found the graves without too much trouble. On Arina's there was a mound of earth and decaying flowers, and on her father's a wooden cross with his and his wife's name etched on it. Horton guessed the headstone had been removed to accommodate the death notices of husband and wife. He bent to read the inscriptions on the cards on Arina's grave, but the weather had made the writing illegible.

  Hearing footsteps, Horton turned to see a tall, athletically built man with fair shoulder-length hair approaching him. His weather-worn face and the name on his green sweatshirt told Horton he was a landscape gardener, either called Jonathan Anmore, or he worked for Jonathan Anmore. The

  former was confirmed after a brief introduction.

  'I look after the gardens at Scanaford House,' Anmore explained. 'Sir Christopher was a real gent and his daughter, Arina, was a lovely lady. Sad to think they're both gone now.
She came here in July to look after the professor when he got ill. Are you a friend of Arina's or the Prof's? I don't remember seeing you at their funerals?'

  'I didn't know either of them. I was a friend of Owen Carlsson's.'

  Anmore looked surprised before his expression deepened into one of concern. 'I heard about his death on the radio.'

  Which was more than Danesbrook had. Horton said, 'I had hoped Arina's relatives might tell me something that would help me find out why Owen died, but I met a man called Danesbrook at the house who said there aren't any relatives.'

  Anmore ran a hand through his hair and nodded. 'That's right.'

  'So who inherits?'

  'No idea.' After a short pause Anmore added, 'Do the police know how Owen died?'

  'Probably, but they're not saying much to me. Could be suicide, could be murder?'

  'But who would want to murder him?'

  Horton shrugged. 'How did Owen seem at Arina's funeral?'

  'Upset, like we all were.'

  'And was that the last time you saw him, Tuesday week?' Horton tried not to sound like a policeman.

  'Yes. What about his sister? Can't she help?'

  So he knew about Thea. 'I don't want to upset her any more than she already is.'

  'No. I guess not.'

  'Did you meet her at Arina's funeral?'

  'No. I heard Owen tell Bella Westbury that she was staying with him for a few days.'

  And who else had heard this, Horton wondered? He asked who Bella Westbury was.

  'The professor's housekeeper. She lives in the village.' Anmore glanced back towards Scanaford House. 'It's that house, you know. It's cursed. Everyone who comes into contact with it ends up dead. Except me and Bella. It's haunted, you know. No, it's true, all documented fact. A father killed his daughter there in 1865 and threw her body in the lake. She's said to walk the house before a death.'

  Anmore's words had pricked Horton's memory. He recalled the book by Thea's bedside, The Lost Ghosts of the Isle of Wight, and the inscription inside it, 'To Thea who has the gift – Helen.' It must have been given to her by her mother and now that book, like all the others in the house, and Owen's environmental papers, were ashes.

  'Did Arina see this ghost before her father's death?' he asked, not particularly seriously.

  'She never said.' Then Anmore grinned. 'I don't believe in ghosts either, but the murder bit's true.'

  And that was one murder that Horton didn't have to solve.

  Anmore's mobile phone rang. There was nothing more to be gained by hanging around here. Maybe this Bella Westbury could provide him with more information.

  Horton headed for the village but not before he paused at the top of the driveway and looked back at Scanaford House. The driveway curved to the left and was screened from the road by evergreen trees. It was as he had thought. Whatever Danesbrook had come here for, it hadn't been to check out Horton's Harley – because unless the man had X-ray eyes there was simply no way he could have seen it.

  EIGHT

  'Tea?' asked Bella Westbury crisply.

  Horton accepted with alacrity, even though he would have preferred a cold drink for his still sore throat. But if it meant he'd learn something that could help them with the investigation then he'd swallow caster oil and like it.

  He stepped into the narrow terraced cottage a few yards along from the village shop where the sales assistant had given him Bella Westbury's address. He hadn't expected her to be in or so friendly, a decided bonus after Danesbrook's evasiveness. He'd introduced himself as a friend of Arina's, saying that he had lost touch with her over the years and had only just learnt of her death. She accepted it readily.

  'Sling your jacket down anywhere and come through to the kitchen. It's warmer.'

  The room felt warm enough to Horton with a wood-burning stove belting out heat but he wasn't going to argue. Bella Westbury was not the type of woman to mess with.

  Horton did as instructed and followed her short, sturdy figure through a small living room crowded with an assortment of old and worn furniture, which appeared to have been thrown together without any regard to design, space or colour. It reminded him of his childhood days spent in rented accommodation before the council flat had become his and his mother's home.

  'Arina's death was tragic,' she tossed at him over her shoulder. 'Such a bloody waste of a life.'

  Horton ducked his head to avoid the wind chimes in the kitchen doorway and didn't quite succeed. Their musical tingling was accompanied by a feline chorus. Horton counted five cats crawling over the small kitchen, which was five too many for his liking. Bella Westbury lifted one from the table where it had been licking at a plate of Ginger Nuts.

  She said, 'Arina was cultured, educated, gentle, kind and intelligent. But of course, you'd know that, being an old friend.'

  Shrewd green eyes examined him out of a weathered face of about fifty-five years. Horton gave what he considered to be a sad smile of acknowledgement, which she seemed to accept as genuine. Quickly, to forestall her asking any questions about his relationship with Arina, he said, 'I was talking to Jonathan Anmore in the churchyard. He spoke very fondly of Arina.'

  'He would. No one had a bad word to say about her. Why should they when she was one of the best? Jonathan always fancied his chances there. But then Jonathan fancies his chances with any female under forty. Arina would joke with him, but that's as far as it went. Biscuit?'

  Horton politely declined.

  Maybe she saw his distaste because she said, 'I'll just let the cats out.'

  The wind rushed in as she threw open the door, setting off the wind chimes. Horton let his eyes roam the cramped, untidy kitchen. They came to rest on the wall beside him that displayed several framed newspaper cuttings.

  'Is that you?' he asked, trying to keep the surprise from his voice as he stared at a young woman with long auburn hair and fire in her eyes.

  'Greenham Common, September 1981,' she answered crisply and proudly, throwing a tea bag into two mugs. 'Twenty-five and full of ideals. Still am, thank the Lord. Not like the namby-pamby kids these days. They're too intent on climbing the greasy pole to the top of a corporation that is as corrupt as they are.'

  Horton thought that a bit harsh but didn't say so. She filled the mugs with hot water and plonked them on the table. Gesturing him into a seat she said, 'I met Ewan there.' Her brow puckered.

  Horton hoped he wasn't about to hear the gory details of a troublesome relationship. But then it was his own fault for raising the subject.

  'He was a miner from South Wales,' Bella continued, sitting down opposite Horton. 'His mother was one of the first women who marched for ten days to set up the Greenham Common Peace Camp. I heard about it on the news and went there like a shot. I was there until 1983 when I married Ewan and went to live in South Wales and we all know what happened after that. I will never forgive Margaret Thatcher and the Tories for their treachery and the police for their brutality.'

  Her voice was harsher and Horton's eyes flicked to the framed newspaper cuttings of a crowd of miners being beaten back by the police. He was rather glad he hadn't come here as a police officer. He certainly wouldn't have been offered tea and biscuits. Although only a teenager at the time and more interested in playing football, he'd seen films of the miners' strike of 1984 and 1985 during his police training. The conflict had produced clashes between the state and the miners in epic propor tions, eleven miners had died, tens of thousands had been arrested, and scores of police had been injured. The mines the colliers had been fighting to keep open were all eventually closed down. The miners lost, big time.

  'I fought beside Ewan,' she said, proudly. 'We were a real community then, not like now where no one knows a single bugger in his street, although it's not so bad here on the island, the last bastion of Olde England. It's so important – community – despite what that bloody madwoman said. We're still suffering the consequences of her reign now.'

  Horton guessed she meant
Margaret Thatcher. He could well imagine Bella Westbury on the picket line. So where was Ewan Westbury now? He'd seen no evidence of a man living here. Dead or divorced, he wondered? He needed to get her back to talking about Arina Sutton and then hopefully Owen Carlsson, but before he could speak she was off on her reminiscences.

  'We all stuck together. The railway workers, seamen, printers, they all came out in support of the miners, and we had international help. It was 1926 all over again with the women running soup kitchens. We staffed food centres and collected cash, but it was all a waste of time in the end. And now look at the mess we're in: oil shortages, petrol prices sky high, power rationing, dependent on overseas countries for coal when we've got a rich resource right under our feet.'