Undercurrent (7 page)

‘No.’

So nothing specifically pointing to ill health. He asked, ‘What was your impression of Douglas Spalding’s personality?’

‘From the rare occasions he consulted me I’d say he was confident and intelligent, an extrovert.’

‘And his wife?’

‘She is still my patient,’ Deacon said a little stiffly.

‘I just wondered if there could have been marital difficulties.’

‘Not that I’m aware of. They seemed a happily married couple.’

‘And the children? Are there any medical conditions that could have caused the parents anguish?’ Horton obscurely probed.

‘None,’ Deacon replied firmly.

Horton guessed he’d read between the lines. He’d considered child abuse and the threat of being exposed could have driven Spalding to suicide.

Deacon glanced at his watch. Horton took the hint. Full medical records would be sent over to the pathologist anyway. And Deacon would probably be called to give evidence at the inquest.

Horton returned to the station mulling over what he’d learnt. He still wasn’t sure if they were looking at suicide or an accidental death caused by a sudden illness. It didn’t appear to be homicide and yet Horton still felt uneasy. The sooner he had the preliminary results from the autopsy the better. He found both Cantelli and Walters in CID and gave them an update after dumping his gear in his office and trying not to look at his desk.

‘Dr Sandra Menchip isn’t back from her holiday until later today but I managed to speak to a couple of people at the university who knew Dr Spalding,’ Cantelli said. ‘Suicide seems to be out of the question as far as they’re concerned. And by all accounts he seemed in good health. I left a message on Dr Menchip’s answer machine to contact me as soon as possible.’

‘See if you can track down this long-legged black beauty that Spalding seemed to know.’

‘Sounds promising.’

‘You’re a married man,’ Horton replied, knowing that Cantelli would never be tempted away from the voluptuous Charlotte. He gave Cantelli the list of names and addresses that Gideon had provided. ‘She works for the caterers.’

‘Do you want me to check with Matt Newton the time Meadows left the dockyard?’

Horton hesitated. He didn’t see any reason for Meadows to have falsified the time of leaving or why he should have anything to do with Spalding’s death, and he recalled that Gideon had told him Newton’s wife was very ill, which obviously accounted for the haggard expression he’d seen on Newton’s features last night. ‘Leave it for now. He’s probably asleep. We can check it after the autopsy results if we need to and when he’s on duty tonight.’ To Walters Horton said, ‘What have you managed to get on Spalding?’

Walters put aside his packet of crisps and swallowed before saying, ‘He’s got a big mortgage, credit card debt, car finance and a few store cards which amount to over a quarter of a million pounds. Both kids go to private school and Jacqueline Spalding doesn’t work.’

Cantelli whistled softly. ‘He must be earning well.’

Horton said, ‘Perhaps she’s got an income.’ He’d like to know how much was going into the Spalding’s household. Could Spalding have killed himself because he was in debt? ‘And?’

‘He’s been at Portsmouth University since April as a visiting lecturer, before that he was at the Maritime Historical Studies Centre at the University of Hull for three years.’

‘And that’s as far as you’ve got?’

‘There’s only been me here, Guv, and I’ve had to answer the phones.’ As though on cue one started ringing. Walters eyed him as though to say ‘see what I mean’.

‘Well answer it,’ Horton said crisply before heading for his office. He’d write up his reports and then try and make a dent in his paperwork. He wondered if he should update Uckfield; he certainly wasn’t going to waste his breath reporting to Dennings. But peering out of the window he saw that Uckfield’s car had gone. Perhaps he was meeting someone for lunch? Horton wondered who she was. He had no idea who Uckfield’s latest conquest was but there was bound to be one. And as neither Uckfield nor Dennings had come pounding on his door asking to know what was happening about Spalding’s death Horton decided not to bother informing anyone in the Major Crime Team. There was little more he could do on the Spalding investigation anyway except wait on the results of the autopsy and for the second time that day he wished Dr Clayton had been performing it. By now she would have given him some indication of how Spalding had died. Or he’d have headed for the mortuary to ask her for her views.

He finished his reports and was about to start on the paperwork that had accrued while he’d been away when his mobile phone rang. It was a number he didn’t instantly recognize. Then it registered that it was Carl Ashton. He hadn’t heard from him in over a year. Not since before his suspension when Ashton had dropped him quicker than hot coal. Before then Horton had often crewed for him on one of his company’s corporate yachts.

‘I need your help,’ Ashton announced abruptly.

He might have guessed. Ashton was probably short of skippers to help for the forthcoming Cowes Week.

‘I’m working—’

‘It’s nothing to do with sailing,’ Ashton replied impatiently. ‘I can’t discuss it over the phone. I’ll buy you lunch.’

‘I’ve got a very heavy workload.’

‘You get a lunch break though.’ Rarely, thought Horton, as Ashton continued. ‘I’ll be at the Bridge Tavern at the Camber. I’ll see you in ten minutes.’ He rang off.

Horton stared at his phone, feeling annoyed. He didn’t have time to take lunch breaks and even if he did he certainly didn’t want to spend them with Carl Ashton. But Ashton asking for help was tantamount to admitting weakness and that was something that didn’t exist in Ashton’s book. So what was troubling him? And why did he need the help of a police officer? Horton was under no illusions that Ashton had called him as a friend. He looked at the clock above his door. It was just after one and he was hungry. He was also curious. Picking up his helmet and jacket he headed back into CID and told Cantelli where he was going and why. He asked to be contacted if there was any news on Spalding’s death, then he made for the Camber.

T
here was no sign of Ashton when Horton swung into the car park. That was typical. Ashton’s ten minutes often meant twice that and Horton’s irritation increased as he headed for the quayside and the Bridge Tavern. Stifling it as best he could he turned his thoughts to Spalding’s death but the strong smell from the fish market across the small marina and from a fishing boat coming in on the tide, mingling with the smell of beer and food from the pub behind him, transported him back to another time when this area had looked very different. Then the pub had been a workman’s rough spit and sawdust place and instead of the expensive town houses and apartments surrounding the Camber there had been an engineering works and sail maker. As the seagulls screeched overhead against the backdrop of clanking crane barges, the diesel engines of the tugs and the Wightlink car ferry behind him, Horton remembered sitting on the quayside as a boy, his legs dangling over the side, eating an ice cream while his mother sat behind him on a wooden bench talking to a man in a suit who had brought them here in a big car. Had it been one of the men in the photograph which Ballard had left on his boat?

A couple vacated the wooden bench nearest him and Horton sat down and retrieved the photograph from his jacket pocket. He studied the six men, two with beards and untidy long hair touching the collar of their patterned open-necked shirts, and four clean-shaven with short Beatle-style haircuts. He couldn’t say if the man he remembered with his mother here was one of them. Ten years after this picture had been taken they would have looked very different and Horton couldn’t rely on his memory. He scrutinized the figures standing behind the six men. He’d already scanned the photograph onto his computer and enhanced it but the faces of the group in the background remained fuzzy. Yet it was clear enough for him to see that none of the women was Jennifer. He’d only had one photograph of his mother and that had been given to him by his foster father, Bernard, just after Horton had witnessed the man he now knew as Ballard handing Bernard a small tin. That picture had been destroyed in a fire on his previous yacht.

In 1967 his mother would have been seventeen and too young to be a student at the London School of Economics but she could have worked there and been the girlfriend of one of these men. And that meant that one or more of them knew something about her. There was no one he could ask. His foster parents were dead and he doubted they’d been told anything about Jennifer anyway. His maternal grandparents too were dead. There was nothing on his social services files because there were no files. And the owner of the casino where Jennifer had worked at the time of her disappearance, the woman she had worked closely with and the police constable who had cursorily investigated her disappearance, were also dead. These men might be too. If only Ballard had given him some indication of the picture’s significance and the identities of the men. But that would have been too easy. Why the mystery and subterfuge? What had Ballard been afraid of? But Horton knew that whatever had happened to his mother it was enough for people to lie and cover it up for years.

Was one of these men Zeus, the code name of the criminal that Detective Superintendent Sawyer of the Intelligence Directorate was keen to find? He believed that Jennifer had run off with him. Zeus had never been caught and Sawyer was eager to use Horton as bait. So far he’d refused but perhaps it was a quicker route to the truth. Unless Zeus got to him first, which Sawyer had intimated was possible. Then it might be a quicker route to the cemetery.

He didn’t get any further with his speculations because he looked up to see Carl Ashton climb out of a new silver Mercedes. Horton stuffed the photograph back in his pocket. He still needed to contact Professor Thurstan Madeley, who might be able to provide some information on the student sit-in protest.

‘Drink?’ Ashton enquired, shaking Horton’s hand and removing his sunglasses to reveal tired pale blue eyes in a suntanned rugged face. Horton thought he had aged since he’d last seen him; maybe Ashton was thinking the same of him.

‘Diet Coke. And I’ll have the fish and chips.’ Well, Ashton had promised to buy him lunch and now that he was here he might as well eat. A flicker of surprise, or was it irritation, crossed Ashton’s face but he nodded and disappeared inside the pub leaving Horton to study the occupants of the two cars that had pulled in behind Ashton. Two bulky men in dark trousers, white shirts and patterned ties had got out of the four-wheel-drive vehicle and were heading for the pub while a couple in their thirties had alighted from the saloon car and were now on the quayside taking photographs of the boats. DCS Sawyer and his words of warning about Zeus had made Horton more conscious of the people around him and more watchful, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if it also made him feel jumpy and insecure then it was.

Ashton returned with the drinks and slipped onto the bench seat facing Horton and the Camber. Horton watched him swallow a large mouthful of ice-cold lager.

‘Heard about your divorce. Catherine told me.’

Horton said nothing. He certainly wasn’t here to discuss his private life.

‘Fiona and I have split up,’ Ashton continued, frowning. His fair hair, bleached by the sun, had grown sparser since Horton had last seen him a year ago and there were more lines on the square-jawed face. ‘We stuck together over Christmas for the kids though it was hell on earth. Called it a day in January. Divorce is going through.’

Horton was amazed that Ashton’s marriage had lasted as long as it had, which he reckoned was fifteen, maybe sixteen years, because Ashton, like Steve Uckfield, hadn’t exactly lived up to his marital vows of fidelity. But that was none of his business and he was beginning to wonder what was, and when Ashton was going to reveal what was bothering him.

As though reading his thoughts, Ashton suddenly announced, ‘I’m being threatened.’ He glared at Horton as though he was personally responsible for the threats but Horton knew the anger was directed at whoever was doing the threatening. It occurred to him that it could be someone connected with Ashton’s marital spilt.

‘In what way?’ Horton asked, thinking if Fiona Ashton wanted to get even with her philandering husband then that was her business and Ashton’s, not his or CID’s.

Ashton scowled and took another pull at his lager before replying. ‘Letters, silent phone calls, a tyre slashed on the Mercedes.’

This sounded more than personal animosity on the part of Ashton’s estranged wife, though that was still possible.

‘You’ve reported this?’

‘I’m reporting it now.’

‘Officially I mean.’

Ashton looked uncomfortable. ‘No. I thought it best to have a quiet word with you, as one friend to another.’

Oh yeah, thought Horton, where were you when I needed a friend? He drank his Coke hoping that his unspoken thought would resonate with Ashton but if it did Ashton certainly didn’t look guilty. He did look troubled though.

‘So you’d like to make a report and get it investigated.’

‘No!’ Ashton cried, alarmed. ‘I want you to look into it for me.’

‘I’m not a private investigator.’

‘But you are a copper.’

‘Yes, and unless you report it I can’t act as a copper.’ Horton knew that wouldn’t normally stop him, and it hadn’t in the case of Edward Ballard, where he’d bent the rules considerably by getting Ballard’s fingerprints and DNA analysed with negative results on both counts. But he didn’t see why he should put himself out for someone who hadn’t given a toss about him.

Ashton ran a hand through his hair and looked concerned. ‘If I report it I’ll have police at my flat and my place of work. It’s bad for business. I need to keep this quiet, you know what people are like, if they get a scent of trouble they make more for you.’

‘Yes. I know,’ Horton replied with feeling, eyeing Ashton coldly. It must have penetrated because he squirmed.

‘Yeah, well . . .’ But he was spared an apology by the arrival of the food. Horton wondered if he would have given one anyway. Once the waitress had left Ashton resumed.