Undercurrent (26 page)

Cantelli picked up the theme. ‘I guess Spalding could have discovered something that was damaging to Brenda Crossley and connected with Jonathan Redsall.’

‘Brenda tracks down Daniel Redsall and invites him over.’

‘Why?’

Horton continued, quickly pulling together the strands. ‘To get rid of Spalding’s research, because it would damage her and Daniel’s father, Jonathan. Marcus Felspur told me that Spalding had only presented the brief outline of his research into women in the Royal Navy at the lecture and that he would publish and present the full paper in the new academic year – perhaps that’s what Brenda was desperate to stop. And perhaps that’s what the intelligence services don’t want coming out. We know Spalding flew to Northern Ireland on the fourth of July and in all probability met up with Daniel to tell him what he’d discovered. Daniel doesn’t want it exposed, whatever it is; perhaps
he
made contact with Brenda Crossley. He arrives at the guest house and together they plan to get hold of the full research Spalding has conducted and destroy it. We only have the Crossleys’ word that Daniel left early that morning. He could have been in the Crossleys’ apartment going through the computer and deleting the files. Then he could have taken the laptop out and ditched it in the sea before meeting someone at Oyster Quays. Then there’s Beatrice Redsall.’

‘But could she have killed her nephew?’ Cantelli asked, shocked.

‘She didn’t like him very much and she certainly didn’t forgive him for not following in his father’s footsteps.’

‘That’s not a motive though.’

‘No. But if Spalding had discovered something that would denigrate her beloved brother, she might kill to hush it up. Perhaps Daniel Redsall choosing to stay in the Crossleys’ guest house has nothing to do with the case and Beatrice Redsall is responsible for all three murders. Or perhaps Brenda Crossley approached Beatrice after Spalding had been to see her, and together they conspired to silence Spalding and Meadows. Brenda might not have wanted Daniel Redsall dead but Beatrice thought otherwise.’ Horton recalled Brenda Crossley’s reaction when he and Uckfield had called at the guest house late the night Redsall’s body had been discovered. She hadn’t seemed upset but neither had she appeared worried or guilty. ‘Get hold of the Navy records of Ivor Meadows, Jonathan Redsall and Edward and Brenda Crossley. Look for anything that connects them. Also see what background you can get on Beatrice Redsall. We’ll re-interview her and Brenda Crossley after Dr Clayton has the toxicology results on Daniel Redsall.’

Cantelli returned to his desk. Horton decided to shelve his thoughts on Meadows’ murder for a while but instead of tackling his work he called up the Police National Computer. With a racing pulse he searched for Quentin Amos and sure enough there he was. Rapidly and eagerly he read the information. Amos had several convictions going back over the years for violent assault and criminal damage, all linked to protests. The first had been in 1968. He’d also been found guilty of importuning in a public place in 1988 and the address they had for him on record was just fifty miles up the A3 in Woking. Horton sat back, his mind trying to absorb this new information. How had Madeley known Amos’s record? OK, so he was a consultant to the police but that didn’t make him privy to all their information – or did it? Or had he contacted Amos about the archive project and discovered his criminal record? Possibly. But there was more than that nagging at the back of his mind.

He glanced at the clock. It was almost seven. No one had called him into the incident suite to assist in the investigation into Meadows’ murder, which was unlike Uckfield. And Bliss was suspiciously silent. He thought he might know the reason. This entire case was being subdued, whitewashed. Uckfield was going through the motions. They didn’t want him stirring things up. So as his presence wasn’t needed Horton grabbed his helmet and jacket, told Cantelli and Walters to call it a day and go home, and said that was where he was heading. Instead he made for Woking and Quentin Amos.

I
t was almost nine when Horton turned into the entrance of the six-storey flat-roofed apartment block in a suburb of Woking that had once been select but was now clearly in the advanced stages of terminal decline. The large Edwardian houses surrounding and opposite it across a busy road had once belonged to professional families, now they were divided into bedsits and let to tenants who cared little for their shabby and inferior homes and about the same amount for the streets around them, which were littered with takeaway cartons, broken glass and beer cans. The block of flats, which was listed as the last known address they had for Quentin Amos, looked to be in the same sad state of affairs, with overgrown grass verges, weeds sprouting through the concrete and the doors to the entrance scuffed and scratched. Horton hoped that his Harley would still be where he’d left it when he finished interviewing Amos, if he was still living here. He might have moved and if so Horton had had a wasted journey.

He located the intercom and pressed the buzzer for flat three. As he waited with an accelerated heartbeat for it to be answered he turned back to the street. There didn’t appear to be anyone watching him and there had been no sign of any dark four-wheel-drive vehicle following him intent on eliminating him, or indeed any vehicle. But then perhaps they (whoever they were) didn’t need to follow him. Madeley could have told whoever was after Horton that he’d given him the information about Amos. It didn’t take a genius to see that Horton wasn’t at the station or on his boat and conclude that he was following up that lead. Maybe they’d get him on the way home? Or perhaps Amos was long gone and Madeley had fed him a false trail, either deliberately or accidentally. Horton didn’t know, but he sensed one thing, and that was he didn’t trust Madeley as far as he could throw him.

There was no answer. Horton tried again while steeling himself against disappointment. Then came a crackle followed by a sharp voice. ‘What do you want?’

On the journey here Horton had had plenty of time to decide his tactics. He’d been delayed by two road traffic accidents. He’d tossed up whether to announce himself as a police officer and use officialdom to get himself admitted, or to tell the truth. Judging by Amos’s record though he thought saying he was a police officer was more likely to get him the closed-door treatment and the ‘you can’t come in without a warrant’ response.

‘Mr Amos?’

‘If you’re selling solar panels, double glazing, collecting for orphaned animals or you’re homeless, unemployed and selling dusters to rehabilitate yourself into a corrupt and greedy society then you can sod off. I’m broke, hate animals, and I stopped believing in the redemption of mankind a very long time ago.’

Horton couldn’t help smiling, then taking a breath he said, ‘My name is Andy Horton and I’d like to talk to you about my mother, Jennifer.’

There was silence. Horton heard the wailing of a police siren somewhere. Amos could say, ‘Who? Never heard of her.’ The silence seemed to stretch for ever but perhaps that was just his taut nerves making him think that. Horton was beginning to wonder if Amos had simply ignored him and returned to his television, but there was another crackle and the sound of laboured breathing, then the buzzer sounded to admit him. With a constricted chest and pounding heart, Horton took a deep breath and stepped inside the grubby and worn tiled lobby, hardly daring to believe he might get one small step closer to finding out something about his mother. He located flat three at the rear of the building and was about to knock on the door when it opened and bathed in the light from behind it Horton faced a very thin, balding elderly man, with a prominent, slightly hooked nose, hunched shoulders and yellowing skin. The eyes that studied Horton were sharp but sunk deep in dark-rimmed sockets. It was obvious to Horton that Amos was seriously ill but equally obvious that his mind was still razor sharp and by allowing him entry it was clear that he remembered Jennifer Horton.

Amos’s eyes travelled over Horton greedily, registering and assimilating every small detail without any reaction. He inhaled then stepped back, admitting Horton into a small and none too clean lobby. The flat smelt of urine, stale food and alcohol.

Horton waited while Amos shuffled past him and ahead into a wide lounge with large glass patio doors opening onto an expanse of darkness.

‘I back onto the cemetery, so they won’t have far to take me when I go, which won’t be long. Sit down.’

Horton removed two piles of books from a battered and threadbare chair, placing them on the floor. He sat. The room was crammed with books; they spilled out from the crowded shelves, onto the big oak table and chairs to the right of the patio doors and over the floor. There was a laptop computer squeezed in between the books on the table and paper strewn about it.

‘I’m writing my life story,’ Amos said, following his glance. ‘Though whether I’ll be allowed to finish it is a different matter. And I don’t mean the cancer will kill me, though there’ll be plenty who will be hoping it will. I’d offer you a drink but I can’t be bothered to make it, unless you’d like a whisky and that comes ready-made?’

‘No thanks. Can I get you one?’

‘Already got one.’ Amos indicated the amber liquid in a glass on the table beside him.

Horton suddenly found himself unable to speak. He was staring at a man who he knew would tell him about Jennifer and he was incredibly nervous. His heart was knocking against his ribs and his palms felt sweaty. What was he about to learn? Would it be so awful that it would scar him more than he’d already been scarred? But surely that wasn’t possible; he’d thought the worse for years. There was still time to cut loose, to decide he’d had enough of the past. But he didn’t move. He couldn’t. He knew that Amos sensed all this in him. The silence stretched on. Horton could hear a clock ticking and outside the squawking of a startled blackbird which seemed almost as loud as a jumbo jet flying overhead.

Amos lifted his glass and swallowed some whisky. After he had set it down carefully he said, ‘It took you a long time to find me.’

Horton’s stomach somersaulted. Was he looking at his father? He didn’t know what to say. Explaining why it had taken him years to discover what had happened to his mother would take too long, and he didn’t see why he should, not yet.

Amos continued. ‘You look like her about the eyes. Hers were as blue as yours.’

The breath caught in Horton’s throat. His chest tightened and he willed himself not to clench his fists, not in anger but in pain, and hurt, and emptiness.

‘She was a very attractive girl,’ Amos continued. ‘Full of life. Always laughing. Liked having fun.’

That fitted with what he’d been told by others – the fun bit especially, which those who had spoken about her had implied she liked having with men.

‘But then she was only seventeen and why shouldn’t she love life, and having a laugh? Christ, if you can’t do it then before life kicks the shit out of you and spits you in the eye, when can you?’

The stuffy, smelly room crackled with bitterness. There was enough hatred in the old man in front of him to poison the air. Quietly Horton said, ‘When did it start to go wrong?’

Amos eyed him shrewdly, ‘For me or for her?’

‘For both of you.’

‘I’m not your father. Jennifer was never my lover. Wrong gender, duckie, as you no doubt know if you’ve run me through your computers, which you must have done.’

Horton eyed him with surprise. ‘You know that I’m a policeman.’

‘A detective inspector, yes. I also know that Jennifer disappeared in 1978 and you were thrown on the mercies of social services, God help you, until one man discovered this and began to put things right, well as right as he could given the circumstances.’

Horton thought he’d stopped breathing. He could hardly believe it but here, in front of him, was someone who knew about him and his past. Rapidly he forced his mind away from emotional responses to reason, and forced his breathing to remain steady. His body was stiff with tension and emotion. ‘Was that man Edward Ballard?’

‘If that’s the name he gave you.’

Horton had already remembered that Ballard, or whatever his real name was, had given his foster father, Bernard Litchfield, a box containing his birth certificate and photograph of his mother, both of which had since been lost in a fire on his previous boat. But now it seemed that Amos was telling him that Ballard had also been responsible or instrumental in placing him with his final and loving foster parents, police officer Bernard and his wife Eileen. But how did Amos know? Horton doubted he’d tell him if he asked though.

‘He also gave me this.’ He reached into his pocket and handed across the photograph of the six men and watched Amos closely as those shrewd pain-racked eyes studied it. Amos turned it over.

‘The student riots. It got Jennifer the sack. She was a typist then at the London School of Economics but she didn’t like towing the line. Keeping silent and being a good little girl wasn’t her style. She was too radical, too involved with the students, not that it worried her. Jennifer liked living dangerously.’

Horton sat forward.

Amos continued. ‘She was very bright, but like a lot of girls from working-class backgrounds in those days she never got the chance to take any qualifications except secretarial ones, and as for going to university that would have been completely out of the question. I doubt her parents or her school teachers ever thought it remotely possible, even though the new so-called “red-brick” universities were set up in 1963 and for the first time students could get state support. It was too little too late for Jennifer. Besides, university would have bored her to death. She liked action, which was why she came to London, for the swinging sixties and all that drivel, although it was true to some extent. Jennifer was introduced to me by this chap.’ Amos stabbed a bony finger at the man on the far right with long hair touching the collar of his patterned shirt. ‘His name was Zachary Benham.’

‘Was?’ Horton sharply interjected.