Undercurrent (27 page)

‘Died in a fire in September 1968.’

Horton felt a stab of disappointment.

‘A fire in a mental hospital which killed twenty-four patients. If you check your files you’ll see that no cause was discovered. Could have been arson or carelessness?’

‘What was Benham doing there?’

‘Good question.’ But Amos said no more, leaving Horton to wonder if Benham had started the fire. Or had he been a patient? If he’d been a patient what illness had he been suffering from? And was Zachary Benham his father? But these were clearly questions for another time – if there was to be one, and that might not be so. No, Horton recognized this was his one and only chance.

‘What was the relationship between Zachary and Jennifer?’

‘Was
he
your father, you mean?’ Amos shook his head. ‘No. He was keen on her, but then everyone was, but although Jennifer liked to flirt she was never serious with any of
them
.’ He jerked his head at the men in the photograph.

Horton read between the lines. ‘Because there was someone else.’

‘Yes. I don’t know who he was, she never mentioned him and I never saw her with him, but there was definitely someone else. Not that we knew that at the time. Zach tried it on but she managed to hold him, and others in the Radical Student Alliance off, and at a time when everyone was sleeping around that was quite a remarkable feat. There was no easy access to contraception then, or abortion, which was only legalized in 1967, the same time as no doubt you know homosexuality was decriminalized for those over the age of twenty-one, in England and Wales but not in Scotland and Northern Ireland or in the armed forces. That came much later.’

Horton wondered who this other man had been. Ballard? Perhaps. He said, ‘So you were a lecturer at the LSE, and that was why she was introduced to you.’

‘I was a lecturer, yes, and although Jennifer worked in the same place I didn’t meet her in connection with our jobs. Jennifer worked in a voluntary capacity for the Radical Student Alliance, which I supported.’

‘What did she do?’ asked Horton keenly.

‘Everything short of making public speeches.’

Horton’s eyebrows shot up. He grappled with this new slant on the woman he’d remembered for so many years as being a tart who hadn’t cared about her child enough to raise him.

Amos swallowed his whisky and continued. ‘Apart from organizing the unruly and vociferous group of radical students and producing leaflets and posters, she did the same as the rest of us – she protested against war, apartheid, victimization, the establishment; you name it we rallied against it. This was the sixties and we had a lot to be angry about. We have a lot to be angry about now – greed, corruption, cruelty, an uncaring and dispassionate government and society – but do we get off our backsides and do anything about it? No, we write to
The
Times
and put it on the Internet,’ he sneered. ‘Not back then. This was the time of the mass anti-Vietnam War rally in Grosvenor Square, which led to the Grosvenor Square riots; the Cold War and double-agent George Blake breaking out of jail masterminded by the Soviet Union; the disturbances in Northern Ireland; the civil rights marches led by Martin Luther King in America. God, there was plenty to occupy us and it was fun.’

Then Amos’s face clouded over. ‘Then Zach died in a fire in 1968, Timothy Wilson died in a motorbike accident in 1969 – he’s the man on the other end of the photograph; James Royston took a drugs overdose in the same year – he’s the middle one with the Beatle haircut – and I got arrested for criminal damage, assault and having sex with an under-age boy in 1971, a triple hat-trick that saw me serve five years in a not very pleasant place.’

Horton sat back, his mind racing. He and Jennifer had lived in London when he was small, so how old had he been when they’d moved from what he remembered as being a nice place overlooking the river to that smelly little overcrowded house? No more than about five. And then they’d moved to Portsmouth where he’d gone to school, so he must have been about six.

He pushed the thoughts aside and brought his mind back to the photograph. Sitting forward he said, ‘That leaves these three men.’ Horton indicated the two men sporting beards and untidy long hair wearing the patterned open-necked shirts, and another clean-shaven man with short fair hair.

‘The second from the right with a beard is Antony Dormand; next to him again with a beard is Rory Mortimer, and the fair man, I don’t know him. He must have come with one of the others. I don’t know what happened to them or where they are now but you’ll probably be able to find out only . . .’ He sat back, grimacing with pain and looking exhausted.

‘Can I get you anything?’ Horton asked, concerned.

Amos managed to shake his head.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve exhausted you and brought back painful memories.’

Amos opened his eyes. ‘They weren’t all painful. There were good times too and at least I was alive and so were those men and I don’t mean in the physical sense.’ He took a breath and Horton could see it was an effort for him to continue. He flapped a hand weakly as though to say ‘give me some time’. Horton did, fearful for him while trying to digest what he’d learnt. He knew there was more that Amos could tell him but whether he was too exhausted or didn’t want to Horton wasn’t sure, though he guessed it was a bit of both. He made to push the photograph back in his pocket when he stalled. Glancing down at it his attention was caught not by the two men Amos had just named but the fair stranger beside them, the man Amos claimed not to know. There was something familiar about him and it wasn’t because he’d stared at this picture countless times. No, he’d seen this man or someone very much like him before and recently but he couldn’t place where.

Amos recovered. His expression both sad and serious he said, ‘Ballard, or whatever his real name is, left you that photograph but he’s not the only one who knows about Jennifer and these men, and I don’t mean me. Who told you about me?’

‘Professor Thurstan Madeley,’ answered Horton putting away the photograph.

A shadow crossed Amos’s cavernous face.

‘Do you know him?’ Horton asked.

‘No.’

Horton frowned, puzzled. Clearly that was a lie. ‘He oversaw the student protest archive file and that’s how he knew of you.’ But Horton knew that wasn’t the truth, because Madeley had known a great deal more than that, such as Quentin Amos’s police record.

Amos gave a cynical and pained smile. ‘Maybe. But this photograph wasn’t in it.’

‘No.’

‘Have you wondered why?’

‘It was the only copy.’

‘And one that was given to you by a man you can’t trace.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve asked yourself why it was held back all these years and why it was kept and not destroyed?’

‘Yes.’

‘And your answer?’

‘Because it’s been on file somewhere or kept by someone who thought it might come in useful one day.’

‘And the reason for that?’

‘Because someone didn’t want one or more of these men to be identified as being either involved in the protests or at the protest on that day. He or they were supposed to be somewhere else.’

‘And some people are paid to sanitize the past.’

Horton knew he meant Madeley and equally that Madeley was more than just a consultant to the police. But Amos’s words also triggered thoughts of the investigation into the deaths of Spalding, Redsall and Meadows, along with something that Marcus Felspur had said to him about people wishing to bury or distort the truth. This was what had happened here and it was happening over the investigation into the deaths of Spalding, Redsall and Meadows.

‘But why was I given your name?’

‘Think it through,’ Amos said sharply, as though addressing one of his former students.

Horton did. ‘Because I already had the photograph and they’d know I’d trace you in the end.’

‘Yes, but look at me, man. By the time you found me unaided I could already have been dead.’

Horton swiftly reconsidered. ‘Then they needed me to find you soon. And they want me to find one or more of these men for them.’

‘Maybe.’

Was there something vital he was missing here? His head was thumping and he couldn’t think what it was. Then it came to him. They wanted him to find Ballard.

Amos’s voice broke through his swirling thoughts. ‘Secrets and lies,’ he said quietly. ‘Someone’s kept silent for a long time. They might want it to stay that way. You might think the days of spies and the Cold War are over and that I’m an old man seeing shadows across every ripple of the sea, but they’re not over, there is always evil below. Be careful, Andy Horton.’

A chill ran through him. He knew that the next time someone came after him he might be lucky to escape with his life.

Horton could see he’d get no more from Amos, and besides, he didn’t know that he had much more to give. He promised to return but Amos brushed it aside. ‘I’ll be dead by then.’

He left and rode home slowly and carefully in the dark sultry night, his mind only half on the thankfully quiet road, the other half on what Amos had told him trying to make sense of it. But when he reached the yacht he still didn’t have the answers. He was tired beyond belief and thought that if they came for him now he wouldn’t stand a chance.

He drank a long cold glass of water and, throwing off his clothes, showered to wash the smell of illness and deceit from him before lying on his bunk staring into the darkness. Ballard wanted the truth about what had happened to Jennifer to be discovered, by him at least, and perhaps he also wanted to find one of the surviving men in the photograph, but with his resources in intelligence, just like Madeley who also had to be involved with the intelligence services, then why didn’t they do it themselves? The simple answer was they didn’t want to get their hands dirty; they didn’t want to be implicated. He was a scapegoat. If he went around asking questions then one of these men, the one they were after, would be provoked into coming out into the open, making a move, and perhaps last night that had been the opening gambit. Then the intelligence services could claim it was nothing to do with them. He was being fed bits of information and they were using him to lead them to this man, whoever he was. He wouldn’t show up on any database, in fact Horton was betting neither of the two names he had from Amos would. And the third man?

Again Horton conjured up the lean youthful face. What would he look like now some forty years later? Why did he strike Horton as being familiar? Then he stiffened as another thought occurred to him. Slowly he shook his head with a sad smile. Quentin Amos had given him what he could, or rather what he’d been permitted to tell him, because the last thought Horton had before sleep overcame exhaustion was that Quentin Amos was also working under instructions from British Intelligence.

I
t was a thought that still held weight in the light of a humid and heavy morning. And he’d been correct; neither of the two names Amos had given him checked out on the police database. He’d arrived at the station early and conducted a search. But he needed a lot more time to research them further and he didn’t have that now. He might not have it in the future, he thought grimly, if there were more attempts on his life. He wondered when they might strike again. A thought that made him edgy but which he was more determined than ever wouldn’t prevent him from continuing his research and doing his job, which was to find a clever and callous killer.

From his office window he’d watched Uckfield arrive. The Super had looked tired and cross, more so than usual. He must know this was a cover-up and it looked as though it was preying on his mind. Horton was tempted to try and reason with him again, but it would probably be a waste of breath.

He put the finishing touches to CID’s performance figures for July and emailed them to Bliss. He didn’t think they’d bring a smile to that frozen face. The customer satisfaction survey would have to wait unless Cantelli and Walters felt particularly inventive. His mind drifted back to his interview with Quentin Amos as he shuffled his paperwork round his desk. There were so many questions that he hadn’t asked, which had swarmed around his head all night like angry wasps. Amos must have known Jennifer well. So what had she really been like? What had made her laugh, cry, get angry? Who had she liked and hated? What had she done when not protesting? He could remember so little about her; he’d spent years trying to eradicate all memory of her. What views he’d held had been tainted by what others had told him and by his own bitterness. He should return to see Amos and soon. He didn’t care for being bait for British intelligence. Who was it they were trying to flush out? Who wanted the truth stifled at all costs? The similarities of his own situation with those of the case weren’t lost on him. He wondered if the key to the first lay in the deaths of those three men in that photograph: Zachary Benham, Timothy Wilson and James Royston. And the key to latter? He wasn’t sure and yet a tantalizing idea danced and swayed on the edge of his mind like an out-of-focus image but before he could adjust the lens the sound of voices in CID caught his attention. Bliss was talking to Cantelli and Walters, who were researching the Navy careers of Meadows, Redsall and the Crossleys. Not that they’d tell Bliss that – after all they weren’t supposed to be investigating Spalding’s or Redsall’s deaths. If she found out she’d go all frozen Queen of the North on them. But Cantelli would do a nice little whitewash job, of that Horton was certain. He’d had years of practice.

A few seconds later Bliss breezed into Horton’s office looking as bright as a laser beam and as fresh as newly laundered money. He eyed her thoughtfully and suspiciously, wondering if she knew he’d seen Madeley yesterday. But why would Madeley tell her about their meeting? And as far as he was aware Bliss knew nothing about his childhood. The thought that she might discover it sent a flutter of panic and fear through him. He had no idea what her reaction might be – perhaps she wouldn’t even care, perhaps her own childhood had been as bleak as his, he didn’t know and he wasn’t interested, but his emotions made him feel vulnerable and that in turn filled him with anger. Then reason asserted itself. Madeley’s masters moved in much more exalted and clandestine circles than that of a mere DCI in CID. And perhaps Dr Douglas Spalding had also moved in the same higher echelons.