Death Surge (13 page)

Maitland said, ‘Seen enough?’

Horton nodded. He silently recalled his own harrowing experiences of being trapped in a fire more than once, and he shivered as he stepped outside the tunnel into the warm, still night. He wished he could shut out the image of that charred, shrunken body, its facial features distorted by blackening and skin contraction, grotesquely resembling a creature out of the grimmest horror movie imaginable, but he knew the sight and smell of it would linger with him a long time.

He returned to the car park where he called in and requested the Scene of Crime Officers and the forensic photographer, Jim Clarke. Then he asked for officers to be sent to the eastern end of Hilsea Lines and all the other entrances to the area and to make sure they were all cordoned off. He didn’t think anyone would arrive to walk their dog at this time of night in the dark, but the press might use them to gain access to the scene. Two from the local newspaper were already here. He wasn’t surprised to see Leanne Payne the crime reporter and Cliff Wesley the photographer. Someone in the watching crowd must have alerted them. Ignoring Leanne’s calls for a comment and Wesley’s flashing camera, Horton divested himself of his protective clothing and, turning his back on them, rang Detective Superintendent Uckfield, head of the Major Crime Team, on his mobile number.

‘What?’ Uckfield barked down the line. Horton could hear laughter and chatter in the background. He’d joined the force with Steve Uckfield and had been best man at his wedding to the former Chief Constable’s daughter, Alison. They’d remained friends, but that friendship had been tested when he’d been suspended on false rape allegations and when Uckfield had appointed that big hulking oaf DI Dennings to his team instead of Horton as promised.

Horton told him what they had without mentioning anything about Johnnie being missing, or the fact that it had crossed his mind this might be him. No point in jumping to conclusions before they had some facts.

‘I’m in Cowes,’ Uckfield said.

Horton hadn’t known Uckfield was on holiday and said so. He assumed that Uckfield was on his motorboat over there. It meant he’d have to call Dennings and he would only cock things up.

But Uckfield said, ‘I’m back in tomorrow, deal with it until then. Brief me in the morning, eight o’clock.’ He rang off.

At least he was spared Dennings, but the briefing would put back the time of his visit to Teckstone’s, which was irritating but unavoidable. Hopefully, Clive Teckstone would be in his office until later tomorrow, and the envelope would certainly still be there.

He saw Maitland approaching and headed towards him.

‘There appear to be two seats of fire,’ Maitland reported. ‘One inside the chamber where the body is, and the other on the bank leading down to the moat. The one in the chamber was lit first, and the second as the arsonist was leaving the scene. I haven’t examined either in detail yet. I don’t want to disturb the scene before we’ve mapped, photographed and videoed it.’

Had the fire been set to cover up a death, or had it been used as the murder weapon? Whichever way he looked at it though Horton knew that someone had wanted this body found. But for the fire it could have lain inside that chamber for ages without being discovered.

Maitland continued: ‘It’s too early to say how the fire was ignited. A flammable liquid most probably; petrol or diesel. I need to make a more thorough investigation to determine that.’ He glanced towards a white van pulling in and behind it photographer Jim Clarke’s estate car.

Maitland moved off to liaise with SOCO while Horton gave a brief statement to reporter Leanne Payne, if only to get rid of her. She pressed him for more information than ‘a body has been discovered by firefighters and we’re currently treating the death as suspicious’, but there was nothing more he could say at this stage, and even if there were he wouldn’t. Wesley took several photographs while he was speaking; Horton hoped the newspaper would use a picture of the fire engines, the fire investigation vehicle or the SOCO team, rather than him.

Questions ran through his mind. How had the victim and the killer got here? There was no car in the small car park or down the lane. The fire setter would have cut it fine returning here to a car after calling the emergency services. But there was nothing to prevent him from parking at one of the other access points to the area, and perhaps after calling the fire brigade he’d returned to it and driven away. Could the victim have come here with the killer, either willingly or under duress? That seemed likely, because Horton thought it a very long way to carry a dead weight. Perhaps this had been a lovers’ meeting place. They’d rowed; the killer had hit out, then seeing the victim unconscious or even dead, had tried to cover up his tracks. But why call the fire service? And why so quickly? All these were questions that would need answering, and nothing much could be done on that front until tomorrow when they had more information from Dr Clayton and could view the scene in the daylight.

He stayed until SOCO had finished and Clarke had taken all his photographs and videos. Taylor, the head of the Scene of Crime team, could add nothing to what Maitland had already told him except that no camping equipment or bedding had been found inside the bunker, which confirmed what Horton had already seen. There was no sign of an accelerant. That didn’t mean that one hadn’t been used, just that no container or evidence had been discovered near the seats of the fire. He’d organize a search of the area for tomorrow.

Maitland said he’d return in the morning to re-examine the scene, and Horton agreed to meet him at nine. That visit to Teckstone’s was being put further and further back. But he couldn’t do anything about it.

By the time he left the scene it was the early hours of the morning and the crowd had dispersed along with Leanne Payne and the newspaper photographer. He made sure the scene was tightly sealed and the area access points policed for the night then he headed for his boat trying to blot out thoughts of that twisted contorted body, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to. The horrifying vision stayed with him, mingling with images of another fire where twenty-three men had lost their lives including Zachary Benham. He tried to shake them off along with the smell of burnt flesh that stung his nostrils and filled his mouth with bile but he couldn’t. As the minutes slowly ticked by, the sound and rhythm of the sea reached into the small space of his yacht. For once he found no comfort in it or his isolation. He willed the dawn to hurry, and he vowed that as soon as it did he would call Dr Clayton and beg her to give him something, anything that would rule out the possibility that what he had seen in that dark tunnel buried beneath the blackened earth were the remains of Johnnie Oslow.

G
aye Clayton was in the mortuary already gowned and booted when he arrived at seven thirty. He’d waited an hour after dawn to call her, and on hearing his concerns she’d hurried there as he knew she would. Before heading to the mortuary he’d called Uckfield and given him a quick update, again without mentioning anything about Johnnie. There was no need yet. Not until he at least had the gender, and he prayed Dr Clayton would be able to give him that. Uckfield agreed to postpone his briefing until Horton had spoken to Dr Clayton. In the meantime he said Sergeant Trueman would prepare the crime board and get Clarke’s photographs and the SOCOs’ initial report. Horton didn’t call Bliss. He didn’t want her blurting out something that could alert Cantelli. But he’d remembered with relief that Cantelli was going to speak to Stuart Jayston this morning and wouldn’t be in the station until later. That gave him some breathing space.

Tom, the brawny auburn-haired mortuary assistant, handed Horton a gown with a look of concern on his big careworn face. He had a penchant for whistling tunes from Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals while he worked, but not this morning.

Horton’s stomach churned at the smell of the mortuary and at the blackened human remains on the slab, which didn’t look any better than it had last night. In fact it looked even worse in the glare of the mortuary lights. He willed his mind to be objective, told himself he was being fanciful, that it could have no connection with Johnnie’s disappearance, but the thought refused to budge. It took all his mental control to blot out the vision of the young handsome eager face, with its determined expression, he’d seen in Sarah Conway’s photographs.

‘All right?’ Gaye asked, concerned.

He gave a curt nod.

She ran her practised eye over the contracted remains. After a moment she began. ‘As you can see the body has assumed a pugilistic posture with the limbs flexed as is usual in the circumstances; tissue desiccation and fractures produce body shortening.’ She peered more closely. ‘There are fractures in the front of the skull, but they could have been caused by the fire.’ She pointed to what had once been a forehead.

Horton forced himself to look. ‘I need to know if it’s a man or woman,’ he said anxiously. ‘Can you tell me that now?’

She eyed him steadily, her freckled face solemn and her green eyes full of concern. ‘Apart from male bones being heavier than female bones there are other indications that provide the gender. A male’s skull will generally have a more rounded supraorbital margin, or brow ridge, and a bony glabella, the portion of bone between the eyebrows and nose.’ She indicated the area with her gloved fingers. ‘The mastoid process, behind the ear, is larger, the mandible more squared, and the forehead slightly backwards-slanting. The nasal cavity of a male will be longer and narrower. I’ll take measurements to confirm it, but these are the remains of a man, Andy.’

Horton’s heart sank. But it didn’t mean it was Johnnie. Surely it couldn’t be him. ‘Can you give me height or age?’ he asked with a hint of desperation.

She eyed him sympathetically, ‘Sorry, not yet.’ She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘I’ll have more for you in about four hours, possibly less. I’ll call you as soon as I have anything.’

And he’d have to be content with that, he thought, stepping outside and taking a few deep breaths as he gazed down on the city laid out before him below the hill. Beyond it the Solent looked sluggish and grey, under a heavy sultry sky. He couldn’t keep the fact they had a suspicious death from Cantelli, or that it was male, and he knew that Cantelli would leap to the same conclusion as him –
it could be Johnnie
– just as every parent whose child goes missing thinks it’s
their
child when a body is recovered from the sea or found in an isolated spot. He looked over to the motorway running from east to west and, beyond it, the patches of woods the other side of the creek where the body had been discovered. It was about two hours to high tide, and he could see the grey water snaking in from Langstone Harbour to the east and Portsmouth Harbour and Tipner Lake to the west, running adjacent and below the motorway. In four hours’ time they might have the answer; meanwhile there were things to be done.

He rang Walters who, as usual, answered the phone in CID with his mouth full. Horton told him what had occurred.

‘Heard about that on the radio this morning coming into work,’ Walters said.

Horton hoped Cantelli hadn’t. If he had though he’d have been on the phone to him. ‘What did they say?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Not much. Gave it about two seconds. Sounded like it might be some dosser. Is it?’

‘Check to see if any males were reported missing last night.’

Then he called Uckfield and told him what Dr Clayton had said, adding that it could be Cantelli’s nephew. He gave him the gist of their investigation so far. Uckfield grunted and huffed but made no comment except to say he’d call up the report. Horton said he would ring in after speaking to Maitland at the scene. He’d be early and Maitland might not be there, but Horton could fill in the time by taking a good look around the area in daylight. He hoped that Bliss would be stuck in a meeting, which would give him another hour’s grace before she started bellyaching down the phone at him.

He made for Hilsea Lines where a handful of people were behind the cordon. PC Seaton said he’d had a few complaints from dog walkers who didn’t see why a death should prevent them from walking their pooch there but otherwise all was quiet. Horton was pleased to see that Maitland was already there. His van was parked in the small car park but there was no sign of him, which meant he must be where the body had been found.

Horton headed up the track to the top of the bastions and turned on to the footpath eastwards. The view to the motorway on his left was obscured by the dense summer foliage and the sound of the traffic slightly muffled by it. He brushed away the flies and an occasional wasp thinking again that it was a damn long way to carry a body. The bracken either side of him didn’t look broken or trampled on, so the victim must have been alive and had either arrived with the killer or had agreed to meet him here. And if the victim was Johnnie then why would he have come here? And where had he been since Wednesday? Horton again wondered if he’d been with a woman.

A blackbird squawked noisily and in panic as he disturbed it, and a robin watched his progress from the branch of a tree unperturbed. Above, the seagulls screeched as they came in on the tide. If the body wasn’t Johnnie, then who could it be? Again Horton considered a lover’s tiff that had gone wrong, but fire setting was usually committed by men, a woman would probably have just fled the scene, although there was nothing to say the lovers couldn’t have been two men. But why call the fire in so early? Why not wait until it was well alight and cause the maximum amount of damage? As he and Maitland had discussed last night, it smacked of someone wanting this body found and quickly, and that didn’t sound like a lovers tiff to him.

The acrid smell of smoke was still strong, and the scene, with its gnarled and blackened trees and grass, looked grim as he approached it. He had just turned right on to the narrow track that led to the step down to the tunnel when Maitland emerged wearing a scene suit, strong boots, a hard hat and a mask, which he removed. He had a liver-coloured Labrador with him on a lead, who barked a welcome at Horton.