Shroud of Evil (16 page)

‘It’s just as Dai said,’ Cantelli reported. ‘The salesman claims Kenton was very friendly. He saw the boat, made up his mind almost instantly and didn’t haggle over the price. The salesman said he wished all his customers were so easy to please. All Kenton stipulated was that it had to come with a berth here. He also told the salesman that it was the first boat he’d owned.’

Now Horton was really troubled. ‘This doesn’t sound like Kenton at all, or rather it doesn’t match what Eunice Swallows and Mike Danby have told me about him. According to them it’s unlikely that Kenton would make a decision on the spur of the moment. He’d be much more likely to make a thorough study of the type of boat to buy, test some out and certainly go on a few courses before buying one.’

‘Maybe he did and he lied to the salesman and the marina manager.’

‘Why?’

Cantelli shrugged. ‘To make him look big.’

And that didn’t sound like Kenton either. Danby had said Kenton could have a slightly superior manner but not in a cocky or flash way, or perhaps he had misinterpreted what Danby had said. Or Danby was wrong. He glanced at his watch.

‘Head for the mortuary, Barney. Eunice Swallows should have made the formal identification of her partner by now. I’d like to know how she reacted. I’ll talk to Dr Clayton. Visit the eye clinic and see what you can sniff out about Brett Veerman. But keep it low key. Make no mention of the investigation.’

Cantelli nodded. Horton knew he could trust him to do that and still find a way to get information. ‘See if you can find out where Veerman was Thursday night and his movements for Friday. Use your charm on the nurses.’

‘Well it worked once,’ Cantelli said grinning, referring to his wife Charlotte. ‘Never know your luck, it might work again.’

And meanwhile, Horton thought, recalling that close encounter with Dr Clayton in the mortuary at Newport, he might try his luck with her.

‘Y
ou’ve missed Eunice Swallows by about an hour,’ Gaye said, waving Horton into a seat across her untidy desk and pushing down the lid of her laptop. He was pleased to find her immersed in paperwork rather than human entrails. He eyed her steadily hoping that his expression didn’t betray the stirring in his loins.

‘I thought she’d have been here earlier,’ he said, surprised.

‘She was due at eleven but business matters prevented her. So she slipped out in her lunch hour.’

Business matters must have been DCI Bliss’s arrival working undercover. ‘Slipped out?’ he queried. ‘Makes it sound as if she thought she’d pop in while buying a sandwich.’

‘It’s what she said. In fact I quote her exact words.’

Horton raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes, not the caring kind, or rather I should say maybe not someone who shows her emotions. Perhaps she’s just clumsy with words. But she was very businesslike and quick. It was a simple case of “yes that’s Jasper Kenton”. There were no tears and she didn’t seem shocked.’

‘Who was with her?’

‘PC Seaton.’

Horton wondered if Seaton had got more from her. He was a good young officer and keen to get into CID, but knowing how tight-lipped and rather fierce Eunice Swallows was he doubted it. ‘Did she say anything else or ask any questions about his death?’

‘No, she was remarkably lacking in curiosity as well as emotion.’

So she either knew all there was to know because someone on the team had told her – Bliss – or she hadn’t cared enough about Kenton to inquire. Perhaps, as Gaye Clayton said, it was just her way because if she had killed her business partner then surely she would have faked some kind of emotion.

‘Is there anything more you can tell me about Kenton?’

‘Looking at the radiology images, which I was doing before you arrived, I think it likely he was dead by late Friday afternoon or early evening but was shot, as I said, sometime late Thursday night or early Friday morning. He wasn’t drugged. How’s the investigation going?’

‘Slowly.’

‘Like the way the victim died,’ she quipped with black humour. Horton understood that.

‘Do you know Brett Veerman? He’s an ophthalmic consultant surgeon.’

‘Dealing with corpses as I do, I wouldn’t have much cause to come across him in my line of work,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Even if the person who has died has donated his or her corneas the body will be quickly taken to surgery and I wouldn’t have any involvement in it or any need to discuss it with Mr Veerman. I know the name though and that’s about it. Do you want to know if he conducts corneal transplants?’

‘Only if he was doing that or any other eye operation Thursday night and what he did after it.’

‘You think he might be the killer.’

‘Let’s say I can’t rule him out but it’s just a theory, and at the moment one which Uckfield doesn’t seem to be buying into. We’ve got no evidence to back it up except that Kenton was investigating Veerman for suspected infidelity and there is a discrepancy of times between when his wife says he arrived home in the early hours of Saturday morning and when he says he did. I know that doesn’t tie in with Kenton being shot on Thursday night but it could still be significant. Cantelli’s sniffing around to see what he can find out.’

‘And you’d also like me to make some discreet enquiries.’

‘Not if it will compromise your professionalism.’

‘It will cost you. And more than a couple of drinks.’ She eyed him coquettishly.

‘I’ll buy you dinner,’ he promptly replied, thinking how nice it would be to spend the evening in her company and wondering if she’d accept. She didn’t look horrified at the prospect.

‘At a place of my choosing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even if it costs a fortune?’

‘It’ll be worth it.’

‘You’re on.’

He returned her smile. Rising rather reluctantly, but with pleasure at the thought of spending more time with her and away from the stench of the mortuary, he said, ‘I’d better rescue Barney before they mistake him for a patient and whip out his appendix.’ He left feeling more cheerful than he had for some time. But Cantelli was looking frazzled around the edges.

‘You’d think I was asking for an on-demand liver transplant,’ he said with frustration outside the bustling hospital that looked more like a shopping mall entrance than a place of healing. Even the wheelchairs were chained liked shopping trolleys, Horton thought sadly, and required a coin deposit refunded on return to their base no doubt to save them from being stolen or ending up ditched in a side street or the creek that surrounded the city. ‘I know everyone is busy,’ Cantelli continued as they headed to the car, ‘and the National Health Service is stretched to breaking point—’

‘Gone well beyond that.’

‘Yeah. But I’ve been passed around more times than a hat at a busker’s night in the pub. Good job I wasn’t dying of anything contagious.’

‘Probably wouldn’t have noticed.’

‘No. Eventually though I ran across one of Charlotte’s nursing friends. It’s a miracle I found one in that maze of a place and Charlotte having left nursing so long ago. I thought all her friends would have jacked it in by now. But Brenda, bless her heart, is going to get me a list of the consultants operating on Thursday night and Friday. I couldn’t just ask for Veerman’s list because I didn’t want to draw attention to him. She’ll email it over as soon as she can but it might not be for some time. Sorry, Andy, but that’s the best I could do in the circumstances and without making it official. Except for the fact that those I did speak to in the eye clinic said Mr Veerman was wonderful. I said I was checking out how good he was for my mum’s cataract operations.’

They had reached the car. ‘Don’t worry, your nurse contact might come up with something and I’ve got Gaye working on it.’

‘I wish her luck,’ Cantelli said with feeling.

And perhaps they would make the request official if he could persuade Uckfield to do so. Heading back to the station he asked Cantelli to contact the powerboat training companies in the area. ‘Find out if any of them provided training to Jasper Kenton over the last few months. I find it hard to believe that he’d buy a boat and take it out without doing a course.’

As Cantelli made for CID, Horton headed up the stairs to the major incident suite where he found a small team of officers and civilians installed at computer terminals. He placed Kenton’s holdall, containing his clothes, and the file detailing the purchase of the boat, on the desk beside Trueman. There was no sign of Dennings and Marsden. Uckfield was in his office. Seeing Horton, Uckfield rose and joined him and Trueman.

‘So Kenton owns a boat, what of it?’ Uckfield declared after Horton had relayed the morning’s discovery. But Trueman had already printed off the photographs that Horton had emailed earlier and had pinned them on the crime board, so Uckfield must have seen them.

‘It could have been used to take him, alive or dead, to the Isle of Wight,’ Horton replied, wondering why Uckfield looked so doubtful about that. Horton told him about the conflicting descriptions of Kenton’s personality. Uckfield dismissed it as being of no account.

‘Thelma Veerman would describe him as being quiet,’ Uckfield said. ‘He’s hardly likely to go around grinning, making jokes and slapping her on the back. It doesn’t exactly instil confidence in the client if the private detective she’s engaged is all “hail fellow well met”.’

‘Then why didn’t Eunice Swallows and Danby describe Kenton as being like that?’

‘So he’s got a bit of a split personality.’ Uckfield shrugged. ‘He
is
the victim not the killer and I can’t see him being killed because his mood changes depending on who he’s with. If that was the case I’d have murdered the ACC long before now,’ he joked. But Horton wasn’t prepared to share it.

‘Why not?’ he quipped, annoyed that Uckfield seemed so uninterested. ‘Perhaps whoever Kenton was involved with finally got fed up with having to deal with this dual personality. Kenton pushed him too far, the killer picked up the pistol crossbow and shot him on the spur of the moment and then left him to bleed to death.’

‘But that—’

‘Doesn’t explain why he was wrapped in a sail and ended up on the shore on the Island,’ Horton added wearily and tetchily. ‘I don’t think a woman alone could have manhandled the body unless she’s built like a Russian shot putter. Has Bliss reported in?’

‘Give her a chance, she’s only just started. I’m meeting her later for a debriefing.’

‘What about Dennings then? Has he got anything from Kenton’s apartment?’ Horton saw Uckfield look beyond him to the door.

‘Let’s ask him.’

Trueman’s phone rang and Horton and Uckfield crossed to Dennings who had just entered with Marsden.

‘Neat as nine pence,’ Dennings said in answer to Uckfield’s question. ‘Everything in its place and clean enough to eat your dinner off the floor. Touch of the OCDs if you ask me.’

And a person suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder didn’t sound like the impulsive man Kenton had been described as at the marina, but it did fit with what he’d seen of the motor boat.

‘Anything in the flat relating to him owning a boat?’ asked Horton.

‘Couldn’t find any oars or old bits of sail if that’s what you mean,’ Dennings answered flippantly.

It wasn’t. ‘Any keys?’ snapped Horton.

‘Only this one and it’s the spare set to his car.’

Horton glanced down at the evidence bag that Dennings placed on the table. In it was a key, tagged with a label, and written on the label in small, round, neat handwriting in ink was the registration number of Kenton’s car.

‘Kenton must have had his boat keys on him when he was killed,’ Horton declared, ‘which means he must have been intending to go to the boat. Boat keys are usually attached to a cork float in case they’re accidentally dropped overboard,’ he explained for the benefit of the non-sailors, Dennings and Marsden. Uckfield would know this. ‘So they’re hardly the sort of keys you carry around with you every day.’ Horton saw Trueman come off the phone. He didn’t join them but turned his attention to his computer.

Dennings shrugged as if to say
please yourself
. Addressing Uckfield, Dennings continued, ‘He’s got a bicycle, rowing machine and a running machine in the garage but no shooting targets or pistol crossbows.’

Horton hadn’t expected there to be anything like that. The latter belonged to the killer.

Dennings continued, ‘The apartment’s above the garage and opens into a lounge that gives on to a small room that Kenton obviously used as an office, but there’s no computer and no phone, just a desk with only a few bits of stationery in it and a couple of files containing guarantees, equipment instructions, security conference notes. Nothing from his bank or of a personal nature like his birth certificate.’

Horton guessed Kenton must have kept that off site in a safe somewhere along with any other personal items that could possibly be stolen and used for identity fraud. Eunice Swallows had told him that Kenton had kept his passport in the office so it was possible his birth certificate was also there and if so Bliss would have it.

Dennings confirmed this by saying, ‘No utility bills either. Must have destroyed them after paying them, or perhaps he paid them all online. No evidence of him having a girlfriend and no family photos or personal correspondence. Couldn’t find any back-up memory sticks or hard drive and no safe.’

Uckfield said, ‘According to Eunice Swallows they use a secure online back-up company where all their confidential files are sent each night but Kenton hadn’t filed anything for Thursday.’

So Bliss had reported something back, thought Horton. Uckfield clearly wasn’t telling him everything but then
he
wasn’t confiding everything in Uckfield. It wasn’t a good way to conduct an investigation but for now it would have to suffice. He again considered Cantelli’s suggestion that Kenton could have been on to something connected with an investigation being conducted by Agent Harriet Eames in Europol. But if that were the case then why hadn’t Detective Chief Superintendent Sawyer of the Intelligence Directorate stuck his beaky nose in?

Marsden, standing beside Dennings, chipped in eagerly. Consulting his notebook he said, ‘The bedroom was also tidy and clean, even under the bed. Good quality clothes and neatly folded, a couple of pale blue shirts, several white ones, all freshly laundered and ironed immaculately. Half a dozen black and grey T-shirts in neat piles and colour coded, socks rolled up into matching pairs, again laid out by colour, as are his underpants.’