Shroud of Evil (21 page)

He was saved from further internal debate over Brother Norman’s less than enthusiastic response to the conviction of the abbey thieves by a telephone call from Elkins who said that Kenton hadn’t put in at any of the marinas on the island or along the coast.

When Horton reached the Veermans’ house the gates were still closed and there was no answer to his summons on the intercom. Frustrated at the thought that he would have to return tomorrow he caught the four o’clock sailing and was back in his office by five.

Cantelli greeted him with the news that Veerman’s car hadn’t been booked on any late-night sailing on Thursday or any return sailing to the mainland on Friday morning.

‘And Brenda, Charlotte’s nursing friend, just called to say that Veerman was booked into one of the rooms in the nurses’ accommodation on Thursday night. The consultants sometimes stay over at the hospital if they need to be on call for a critically ill patient.’

‘Did anyone see him there?’

‘Not that I know of, but short of questioning everyone on the ward and in the nurses’ accommodation we won’t know.’

And that didn’t look as though it would happen. ‘He could have left the hospital and gone to Hamble Marina.’

‘Wouldn’t he have been taking a risk if the patient had a relapse and he was sent for?’

‘Perhaps he knew the patient would be OK. Or perhaps he briefed a fellow surgeon to stand in for him in case of complications.’ Horton rang through to Uckfield and told him he hadn’t been able to speak to Thelma Veerman but he relayed what Cantelli had discovered, adding, ‘It looks as though he might not have an alibi.’

‘Doesn’t mean he’s a killer.’

‘No, but it does mean we should question him.’

‘We will.’

‘When?’ Horton asked, exasperated.

‘When I bloody well say so,’ snapped Uckfield and rang off.

Horton glared at his phone. Restless and irritated by the lack of activity Horton crossed to Walters who had just returned.

‘No joy with the hardware stores, guv. But I’ve identified a couple of restaurants along that road that could be possible targets: Indian and Turkish, both have got crap security systems. I gave the owners a lecture on getting better security but I don’t think they understood a bloody word I was saying. Just threw their hands about and nodded.’

Sounds like Uckfield, thought Horton with bitterness, except the fat man wasn’t doing any hand waving.

He returned to his office and spent an agitated couple of hours shuffling paper around his desk. When Cantelli and Walters left Horton also called it a day. He didn’t feel that he had achieved very much. But there was something he could do and which might give him information and it wasn’t connected with the Kenton investigation or the racist slogans in the restaurants.

A
small slim man in his mid-seventies with a face like a walnut answered the door and confirmed to Horton that he had lived there for forty years. Horton swiftly introduced himself, showed his ID and told Mr Kimber that he could call the station to check who he was before letting him in. Harry Kimber waved aside such precautions and ushered him into the front room with pleasure.

Horton refused a cup of tea. He could hardly believe his luck. He had hoped that one of Eileen and Bernard Litchfield’s neighbours might still be living next door but he hadn’t really expected it.

He settled himself into an armchair in the front room at Kimber’s insistence while the elderly man took the chair opposite him. The room was overcrowded with old-fashioned furniture but it was spotlessly clean and the sideboard to the left of Horton in the alcove boasted so many family photographs that Horton could barely see the surface. He couldn’t hear anyone moving about the house and wondered if Mr Kimber was widowed and lived alone. A fact he confirmed when he saw Horton glancing at the photographs, adding that his two sons lived abroad, one in America, the other in Canada.

‘You remember Adrian and Tom.’

But Horton didn’t, not much. They had been older than him, in their early twenties when he was a teenager and they had already left home. He said as much, causing Kimber to nod agreement. Horton remembered little of Harry Kimber or his wife. His experience of being pushed from pillar to post and of seeing countless people come and go in children’s homes, along with the pain of his mother’s desertion, had made him cautious about forming any attachments. Not that he’d reasoned that back then. He’d just tried to shut out other people. A remark that had been levied at him by Catherine and maybe she had been right. His failed marriage and his past were perhaps reasons why he was still reluctant to let anyone get too close. Maybe Thea Carlsson had sensed this and taken herself off before he could hurt her. Perhaps his reasons for keeping his distance with Harriet Eames and with Gaye Clayton were just excuses to prevent him from being hurt and rejected again. Christ, he was sounding like a psychologist. And maybe he was about to break that habit, he thought, over dinner soon with Gaye.

Horton broached the subject of his visit. ‘I’m not here in an official capacity, Mr Kimber, but a personal one. It might seem a strange request but I’d like to know more about Bernard and Eileen, my foster parents.’

‘They’d have been proud of you, especially Bernard, you following in his footsteps so to speak and becoming a Detective Inspector. You’ve done well, lad.’

Horton felt a grateful warm glow. ‘Thank you.’ Then he added ruefully, ‘I guess I was a handful.’

‘A bit of one, yes. But understandably so, given your background.’

‘You know about it?’ Horton asked, surprised.

‘Only that your mum was taken suddenly. Heart attack wasn’t it, and you were left alone and very young.’

So that had been the official version.

‘Must have been tough on you.’ There was a moment’s silence before Kimber continued more brightly, ‘So what do you want to know?’

‘How long did you know Bernard and Eileen?’

‘Years before they moved in next door. Well, Bernard I did.’

Horton started with surprise. That he hadn’t expected. He cursed the fact he hadn’t come here sooner. Not that he thought it would lead him any further forward in his search for the truth about Jennifer’s disappearance, but any information was better than none. And police work was all about gathering, sifting and putting together information until something emerged, and that was what they should be doing as far as Jasper Kenton’s death was concerned. For now though he was eager to hear more about his foster parents.

Harry Kimber said, ‘In fact it was me who told Bernard the house next door was up for sale. He was living in a rented house then with Eileen. But he managed to get a mortgage and he and Eileen had a bit of money put by. They moved in at Christmas 1979 but Bernard and I go right back to when we did our two years National Service together in 1957. We took to one another immediately. Those were the days of the Cold War, the Suez crisis and the Cyprus conflict. Bernie and I were posted to Cyprus in fifty-nine. It was a bit hairy. British rule was coming to an end, not that we knew that then. We knew nothing. We were working-class boys from the streets of Portsmouth, our dads worked in the dockyard, like nearly everyone in Portsmouth did in those days. And you followed in your father’s footsteps. Bernie and I were glad to get away and have a bit of an adventure, not like some who did their National Service and hated it. We loved it, the more dangerous the better.’

Horton tried to see the gentle giant he had known as a reckless young man without fear. It was difficult, but then he was looking back at it from a troubled teenager’s point of view and one who’d had a large chip on his shoulder. Bernard had managed to get him out of many scrapes and had quietly talked to him. He’d never raised his voice or his fists; he’d never lectured him; he’d just left him to consider what he had done and why and told him he was clever enough to know right from wrong and doing wrong didn’t make things right.

‘Do you have any photographs of Bernard and Eileen?’ Horton felt a real desire to see them, not to help him with research into his mother’s disappearance because they couldn’t, but so that he could have a better picture of the couple who had saved him from descending into a hellish life of being on the wrong side of crime. And it hadn’t just been Bernard who had refrained from lecturing him: Eileen had never chastised him either, even when he had said such hurtful things to her in his anger and pain. She wasn’t his mother and he had resented her for that. He’d rounded on her often. Again and again she had simply repeated that no, she wasn’t and could never be, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love him. She never spoke ill of his mother, in fact now he thought back she never spoke of her. And with the passing years he’d come to see Eileen as his mother. His heart ached as he recalled her dying days. He was only glad to have been with her and to have had the opportunity to thank her quietly and to tell her he loved her. He didn’t know whether she had heard him.

Kimber said, ‘I have some pictures of Bernard but not Eileen. She was very camera shy, not like they are today.’ He sprang up with surprising agility and crossed to the sideboard. ‘Don’t you have any photographs of them?’

‘No. Eileen must have cleared them out before she moved into the flat.’ And now that he considered it, that was rather strange. And he couldn’t remember Bernard or Eileen taking any photographs of them together, or of him on his own.

As Kimber rummaged around in the drawers Horton said, ‘What did Bernard do after his National Service?’

‘Resumed his apprenticeship in the dockyard, like I did, but neither of us could stick it. He joined the Royal Air Force as a policeman and I joined the navy as a diver. Bernie was in the RAF Police until 1979 and then joined the Hampshire Force. He was injured while he was serving in Northern Ireland in 1978. Shot in the shoulder while patrolling the airfield at RAF Aldergrove.’

‘I didn’t know that. He never said,’ Horton said, surprised. And he hadn’t known that Bernard had served in Northern Ireland.

‘He wasn’t the type to talk about it or his job. The wound wasn’t serious. Could have been a hell of a lot worse. He could have been killed. Many service personnel were, and civilians, innocent women and kiddies. It was before those terrible bombs were set off by the IRA in towns and villages across Northern Ireland. And all those bombs in December in Bristol, Coventry, Liverpool, Manchester, and just up the road in Southampton. The IRA said they were gearing up for a long war,’ Kimber said sadly. ‘But then we seem to have just as many, if not more, troubles now. And all in the name of religion. Or so they claim. Still,’ he said more chirpily, ‘Northern Ireland was where he met Eileen.’

And that was another shock for Horton. ‘She was from Northern Ireland?’ Eileen had never spoken with a Northern Irish accent. And she’d never once mentioned coming from there, and neither had she or Bernard talked about their family – or if they had then he hadn’t paid much attention, but then a teenage boy would hardly have been interested in his foster parents’ past, only in himself. And Horton didn’t remember any family coming to visit. His mind raced back through those years. Now that he came to consider it he didn’t remember any friends either, except Harry Kimber and his wife. The Litchfields had been a very private couple.

‘Eileen was working in Belfast as a typist in the Civil Service. Now where was she from? I can’t remember if she said …’ Then he clicked his arthritic fingers. ‘That’s it. Me and the wife were going on holiday and she said, “Give the island my regards” or “my love”, something like that.’

‘She was from the Isle of Wight?’

But Kimber shook his head. ‘No. Mary and I were going on holiday to the Channel Islands.’

‘Which island?’ Horton asked eagerly even though he already knew the answer.

‘Guernsey. Beautiful place. You ever been? Mary and I went back a couple of times. We both loved it.’

Was it a coincidence that Eileen had come from the very place that Ballard had told Horton he was sailing to – only he didn’t go there, according to Horton’s sources. It had to be, surely. And Kimber could be mistaken. “Give it my love”, or some such phrase, didn’t mean she had lived there or had been born there; she might simply have been there on holiday. Then why did he have this feeling that it was highly significant? Was there something in Guernsey that connected Eileen Litchfield with Edward Ballard? Guernsey didn’t tally with the location reference that Dr Quentin Amos had left him, which was Gosport. Same initial, yes, but miles apart in location and topography. He needed to consider this more fully.

‘Do you know what Eileen’s maiden name was?’ He could get it from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages but this might save him time.

‘No, sorry. Ah, here they are.’ Kimber turned and handed Horton two photographs. A flood of warm affection swamped Horton as he gazed down at the fit, dark-haired young man in his twenties wearing his army national service uniform. There were the deep-set brown smiling eyes in the heavy square face that he remembered. He swallowed and cleared his throat. Standing beside Bernard was a fair, good-looking man with blue eyes and a cheeky grin. Harry Kimber. He heard the elderly man sigh.

‘It doesn’t do to look back,’ Kimber said sadly.

How bloody right he was, Horton thought, turning to the second photograph of Bernard. He was dressed in combat fatigues and a flak jacket and was carrying an automatic self-loading pistol.

‘Northern Ireland,’ Kimber said. ‘Not quite sure why I kept that one or why Bernard gave it to me, but it could have been to show me how tough he was.’ Kimber looked sorrowful for a moment, as he thought back down the years. Then he brightened. ‘But I knew that anyway, or at least how brave he was. And a little reckless. Bernard always was a bit of an action man, more so than me.’ A frown creased his already corrugated forehead. ‘I was worried about Bernard during the troubles. IRA bombs going off everywhere, not only there but over here too. Terrible times, they were. You’ve got to be on the alert for terrorism but I don’t need to tell you about that.’

No, thought Horton; extreme views often led to vandalism, destruction, physical pain and murder. He just hoped their racist restaurant vandal would be apprehended before it went any further.