The call came through just as Nat King Cole was about to roast his chestnuts on an open fire, and just as Horton reached the head of the long supermarket queue. He scrabbled for his mobile phone inside his leather jacket, drawing a loud exhalation of disapproval from the woman behind him, while he threw an apologetic smile at the twenty-something cashier processing the toys and books he was buying for his daughter, Emma. It was Sergeant Cantelli and he’d only call if it was important.
‘I’ll call you back in two minutes,’ Horton said hastily. He pushed his phone back in his jacket pocket and stuffed the Christmas presents into three plastic carrier bags. He hoped Emma would like them. The thought that he no longer knew his nine-year-old daughter’s tastes caused him a surge of anger towards his ex-wife, Catherine, who seemed determined to keep him as far away as possible from Emma as she could. Catherine had begrudgingly allowed him to see their daughter on the day before Christmas Eve after which she was whisking her off to spend Christmas on the Côte d’Azur on board her new boyfriend’s luxury yacht. Peter Jarvis was chief executive of an international packaging company, divorced, and the fact that he was watching Emma grow up, while he was being shoved out, made the bile rise in Horton’s throat.
He hurried out of the supermarket feeling irritable. The grey sky was heavy with the threat of sleet and there was an icy edge to the north-westerly wind. Predictions of a white Christmas were coming thick and fast but his experience of living on the south coast of England told him that by Christmas it would be mild, wet and windy. He didn’t care either way. He’d be on duty. Much better to work than sit on his boat alone thinking of what he’d lost. He crossed the crowded car park to his Harley, where he put the goods into the pannier, and called Cantelli.
‘Elkins has got a Christmas present for us,’ Cantelli announced.
That didn’t sound good. Dai Elkins was the sergeant in charge of the marine unit.
‘It’s not a body washed up on the beach, is it?’ asked Horton, thinking about the last time he’d been called to view one, not by Elkins on that occasion but by former DCI Mike Danby who now ran a private close protection security company. That body had been found on the private beach of Lord Richard Eames’ extensive Isle of Wight holiday property, five miles across the Solent from Portsmouth, in mid-October, and the investigation had led Horton further in his quest to discover the truth behind his mother’s disappearance over thirty years ago. Not that anyone knew that, unless he counted Lord Eames, a client of Mike Danby, and the man Horton believed was involved in Jennifer’s disappearance. He quickly shelved his thoughts on the progress of his own private investigations as Cantelli said, ‘It’s not a body, exactly.’
‘What do you mean, “exactly”?’
‘Don’t know. Dai said we had to see it. I’m on my way to Oyster Quays Marina. Hope it doesn’t mean I have to go on a boat,’ Cantelli added warily.
‘Probably. I’ll meet you there.’ Cantelli could get sick just looking at the sea, a decided drawback when living in a city surrounded by it.
Heading towards the popular waterfront development of shops, cafés, bars, restaurants and leisure outlets Horton was glad to let his troubled thoughts find refuge in work. He speculated as to what Elkins might have in store for them which warranted the summoning of CID, and why he was being so mysterious. A stash of drugs? But then he’d have called the drug squad. Perhaps he’d retrieved some stolen goods. But neither of those things matched with not ‘exactly’. Well he’d find out soon enough he thought, swinging into the underground car park and riding the escalator to the shopping malls. A brisk walk through the crowded centre brought him to the waterfront where Cantelli was waiting by the marina gate. He was talking to a bulky, balding, uniformed officer.
‘OK, so why the mystery?’ Horton asked Elkins as he keyed a number into the security pad to admit them to the pontoons. An icy blast of wind billowed off the sea from the narrow entrance of Portsmouth Harbour. Horton could see the small green and white ferry crossing to the town of Gosport opposite and an orange and black pilot boat was making its way into the Solent, probably to escort a container ship or continental ferry into the port.
Elkins’ expression was grave. ‘You’ll see.’
Horton’s eyes flicked over the small marina but he could see nothing to warrant Elkins’ gravity or the reason for his reticence. Whatever it was though he knew it had to be connected with the two men huddled in the cockpit of the police launch, which was moored up on the outlying pontoon facing on to the harbour. In front of the police launch was a blue-hulled motor cruiser and on board Horton could see PC Ripley. Elkins couldn’t have arrested a couple of drug runners because he’d never have let them sit meekly on the powerful police launch awaiting arrest.
Cantelli pushed a hand into the pocket of his rain jacket and pulled out a packet of chewing gum. He offered it around. Horton declined but Elkins took a strip, saying, ‘The thin guy with receding hair and the stoop is Lesley Nugent, the other fatter man is the owner of the boat Ripley’s on; Clive Westerbrook. He suffers from high blood pressure and has a dickie heart.’
Then he should lose weight, thought Horton, but that was Westerbrook’s business, not his.
Elkins said, ‘They were fishing for bream off Boulder Bank, just off Selsey Bill, east of here,’ he explained for Cantelli’s benefit. Horton, being a sailor, knew exactly where it was, in fact he knew practically every nautical mile of the Solent. ‘The tide runs hard over the Bank and floating weed can be a problem,’ Elkins explained. ‘Lesley Nugent says his line caught on some seaweed wrapped around a container. He reeled it in and was disentangling it when he noticed how heavy the container was. He opened it, with Clive Westerbrook watching, who said he nearly had a seizure when he saw what was inside.’
‘And that was?’ asked Horton, as they walked past the two men on the police launch. They both appeared nervous.
Elkins didn’t answer but climbed on board the blue-hulled motorboat. Horton followed suit while Cantelli elected to remain on the pontoon. The canvas awning had been rolled back from the cockpit and velcroed into place, exposing them to the biting wind sweeping off a grey choppy Solent beyond the harbour entrance. Swiftly Horton registered the fishing rods, reels, bait, tackle box containing long-nosed pliers, a filleting knife, elastic, hooks and other odds and ends. It was a bitterly cold day for fishing but he guessed the weather hardly mattered if you were a fanatic.
There were two seats at the helm and between the seats Horton could see down the hatch into the single cabin. On the right was a small galley. In the centre of the cabin was a table with nothing on it and seating either side of it which he knew, from the design of this type of boat, made up into a double bunk. To the left was the heads which would contain a sea toilet and sink. This boat was fine for an overnight stay, or for a few days if you weren’t too fussy, but not for much more, although he had lived on a smaller boat than this after Catherine had thrown him out following those false rape allegations while he’d been working undercover two years ago. That little yacht had been destroyed in a fire, almost with him on board, and the yacht he now sailed and lived on board was luxury in comparison, and a great deal newer than this boat which was about twenty years old. But this was solidly built and classically designed, and would still be ploughing the Solent and the English Channel in another twenty years when its flashier and more modern and expensive cousins had been consigned to the boat scrapyard.
‘This is what they fished up.’ Elkins indicated the dirty white plastic container lying on the floor of the cockpit. It looked to Horton like the type used for containing ice cream or margarine bought from the wholesalers only there were no labels or markings on it and inside he could see the vague shape of something that caused him a puzzled frown. Elkins nodded at Ripley, who, with latex-covered fingers, prised open the lid. Horton started with surprise but it was Cantelli, peering over the side of the boat, who voiced his initial thoughts.
‘My God! Is it real?’
‘It’s real all right,’ Elkins said solemnly. ‘You can see the arteries where it’s been severed at the wrist.’
And the blackened exposed tissue, thought Horton, quickly recovering from his initial shock, staring at the human hand. The flesh, although a yellowish colour and emitting a sickly odour, was intact, no sea creatures or insect life had eaten into it, and there was no decomposition, which meant it couldn’t have been in the sea for very long. The container could have protected it he supposed, it looked fairly waterproof. There were slithers of water in the bottom but they could have been caused when the container had been opened by the two fishermen. The hand was fairly broad but the fingers were thin, ringless and quite long. A man’s hand he thought, though he’d leave that for Dr Gaye Clayton, the pathologist, to confirm. Mentally he measured it against his own hand and decided that whoever it had once been part of had been leaner than him. The nails were short, possibly bitten. He couldn’t see any tattoos and he wasn’t going to turn it over to find out if there were any on the palm.
‘Could a boat propeller have sliced it off?’ asked Cantelli.
‘It could but that hardly accounts for it being in a container. And where’s the rest of him?’
Cantelli shrugged and reached for his mobile phone inside his jacket pocket. ‘I’ll call in and check for missing persons over the last couple of weeks.’
Hopefully Dr Clayton would be able to lift fingerprints from the hand which might give them a quicker ID than waiting for DNA. Horton nodded at Ripley to replace the cover and instructed him to put the container in a plain brown paper evidence bag. He didn’t want anyone ogling it as they transported it to Cantelli’s car. Ripley disembarked and Horton addressed Elkins. ‘Did the fishermen touch it or lift it out of the container?’
‘They said they were too shocked to do anything except call the coastguard. When the coastguard received the panic stricken call from Clive Westerbrook at ten thirty-five they immediately thought that someone on board had chopped his hand off by accident. They rushed out, found this and called us.’
‘Let’s have a word with them.’
Clive Westerbrook looked haggard, his dark eyes were haunted and fearful, which was understandable given the circumstances thought Horton. His companion, Nugent, didn’t look much better. Hunched into the collar of his waterproof jacket with his hands thrust deep in the pockets he eyed them like a man about to be executed.
‘Is it some kind of sick joke?’ Nugent asked, agitatedly.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Horton answered solemnly.
Nugent looked as though he was about to throw up. Elkins eyed him with alarm, probably at the thought that he’d have to clean up the vomit.
Horton quickly continued. ‘We’d prefer it if you would say nothing about this for now especially to the media.’ Leanne Payne, the local crime reporter, would love this, and so too would the national media. He added, ‘We don’t want to distress anyone unnecessarily.’
Nugent swallowed hard as he fought to get a grip on his nerves and his stomach. But Westerbrook’s breathing became a little more laboured. ‘I won’t keep you long,’ Horton said with genuine sympathy. ‘You’ve both had a shock. Just a couple of questions. I understand the boat belongs to you, Mr Westerbrook?’
‘Yes. I wish to God we’d just thrown the bloody thing back in without looking.’
And if they had perhaps someone else would have fished it up or it might have washed up along the south coast or across the Solent on the shores of the Isle of Wight for another person to discover. But when, and in what state, was anyone’s guess. There probably wouldn’t have been any fingers left, let alone prints, but there might still have been enough of the hand to extract DNA.
‘Do you remember seeing anything else floating around the boat?’ Horton could see by the nervous glance they exchanged that they were both following his train of thought, the body could have been close by, or certainly the remains of it either in or out of containers. Nugent shook his head. Westerbrook’s skin turned a paler shade of grey. There was a thin film of perspiration on his brow. He looked ill and Horton was concerned about him. ‘If you could give your contact details to Sergeant Elkins that will be all for now but we’ll need a statement from both of you. You can come into the station and make it later.’
‘No. I’ll do it now,’ Nugent hurriedly said. ‘I can’t face going back on that boat even if that thing has gone.’
‘And I need to take my boat back to the marina,’ Westerbrook said.
‘And that is where?’
‘Fareham.’
Horton had sailed into there a few times. It was a small marina nine miles to the west of Portsmouth by car and situated at the top and north-westerly end of the harbour. He didn’t see any reason why Westerbrook shouldn’t do that. His boat wasn’t a crime scene so there was no need to seal it off and call in the Scene of Crime Officers. He was more concerned about Westerbrook being fit enough to handle the boat.
‘Will you be all right?’ he asked. ‘PC Ripley could pilot it for you.’
‘No. Thanks. My car’s there. I’ll call in at the police station on my way back home. I live here, in Portsmouth.’
Horton offered to get a car to take Nugent to the police station to make his statement but Nugent declined. ‘I’ll walk. I need the air.’
Horton understood that. Alighting, and out of earshot of the two men, Elkins said he and Ripley would take a look around the area where the hand had been found. ‘Not that I’m expecting to find any more surprise packages, the tide will have shifted anything, but you never know.’
Horton joined Cantelli and together they headed back towards the boardwalk, Cantelli carrying the gruesome cargo.
‘No reports of anyone missing over the last fortnight,’ Cantelli reported. ‘But that’s only in this area. This,’ he jiggled the bag, ‘could have been thrown from the side of the Isle of Wight ferry or one of the continental ferries, or a container ship or cruise liner, which means it could have been brought from anywhere in the country and then dumped in the sea.’
‘That’s right, cheer me up.’
Cantelli smiled. ‘And the hand could be older than a few days. It might have been stuffed in a freezer before being thrown in the sea, hence the container. It reminds me of a 1951 film The Thing from Another World. A space ship crashes in the North Pole with a humanoid alien on board and the Air Force sends in a team to investigate. They sever the creature’s hand. It feeds on human blood and comes to life.’
‘I don’t think you’re in danger of that, Barney, but if you don’t show at the mortuary in thirty minutes I’ll put a call out for you.’
Horton arrived at the mortuary ahead of Cantelli where he was told that Dr Clayton was at a medical conference in London and wouldn’t be back until late afternoon. He stifled his disappointment and sought out her much respected mortuary attendant, Tom, by which time Cantelli had safely arrived. He placed the container on a mortuary slab in front of the burly, auburn-haired Tom, and Horton waited with keenness to hear the mortician’s analysis.
‘It’s human all right,’ Tom pronounced cheerfully, peering at it. ‘Caucasian male.’
They’d got that far themselves. ‘Any idea how it was severed?’ asked Horton.
Tom shook his head. ‘No, though I’d say expertly and cleanly. I’ll take some photographs and email them over. There’s very little decomposition, and although the skin is a bit dry, I should still be able to lift some decent fingerprints. I’ll send them over to the fingerprint bureau.’
That might give them a match, always given that the victim was on the database, and Horton wasn’t sure they’d be that lucky. ‘Any idea on how long it’s been parted from its owner?’
‘Two, possibly three days. Dr Clayton will be able to give you more.’
They had to be content with that. Horton gave instructions for Tom to send the container to the lab for forensic examination and headed for the station mulling over the discovery. The hand could belong to a villain who’d had it hacked off as retribution for a crime perpetrated against some innocent person. Wasn’t there something in the Bible about that? He’d ask Cantelli, him being a good Catholic boy, he should know. Religion had never featured in Horton’s life. The only times he’d been to church had been in the course of work and when he’d got married and look where those vows had taken him. Catherine certainly hadn’t stuck to him for better or worse.
Or perhaps the hand was that of a villain severed by a villain, possibly a rival gang member. And what had happened to the rest of the remains? How had the victim died? Had it been quick and painless? Or had he been beaten and tortured first? Had he been alive and conscious when the hand had been severed? What kind of person could do that? A heartless bastard was the answer, but then Horton quickly revised that, it could be someone fuelled with rage and hatred, someone intent on revenge, or someone mentally deranged. And although these were questions that Detective Superintendent Uckfield, head of the Major Crime Team, would ask, without more to go on Horton thought he was unlikely to get the answers.
Uckfield’s BMW was in its allotted space but the head of CID and his boss, DCI Lorraine Bliss’s sports car wasn’t. Good. That suited Horton fine. No need to report to the ice maiden first. He made for Uckfield’s office in the major incident suite and was surprised to find it a hive of activity. For a moment he wondered if the rest of the corpse had turned up but Trueman quickly put him right on that.
‘It’s Alfie Wright, he’s done a bunk.’
That wasn’t likely to put Uckfield in a very good mood. Horton knocked and entered the Super’s office on his sharp command.
‘What happened?’ Horton asked, taking the seat across the desk and eyeing Uckfield’s craggy face, flushed with fury.
‘The bastard didn’t show in court.’
Horton frowned, annoyed. ‘Can’t think why he wasn’t remanded into custody in the first place.’
‘Because Ewan Stringer pleaded mental health issues so damn well that it blew Tim Shearer’s pathetic prosecution to pieces. Makes you wonder why we do this job. Might as well make us all redundant and let the low-life scum criminals do what they want.’
Horton wouldn’t like to be in Shearer or Stringer’s shoes.
Uckfield continued. ‘If Tim Shearer had got more of a grip on the case Wright wouldn’t have walked out of that court on conditional bail. If this is the standard of his work I wish he’d bugger off back to London where he came from.’
Horton disagreed about Shearer. He found him a breath of fresh air after the last Chief Crown Prosecutor, who had grown cynical and disillusioned, not that Horton blamed him for that, but he’d also grown careless. Shearer, however, was keen, intelligent and dedicated to his work, but now was obviously not the time to point this out.
Uckfield continued his rant. ‘And as for that weedy nerd Stringer, of course Alfie Wright’s got mental health issues, he’s a bloody nutter.’
Stringer was a forensic mental health practitioner, who provided assessments on offenders for the courts. Horton knew that many offenders desperately needed psychiatric medical help rather than a prison stretch but not in Wright’s case, he was a persistent and violent offender. And prison was what he fully deserved after his vicious attack on David Jewson, a family man in his forties, a bus driver, who’d been having a quiet pint with his family in a pub until Wright had taken a dislike to him. But instead of being remanded until the trial Wright had been given bail on the condition that he remain at his address, a bedsit in the centre of the city.
‘When did Wright go missing?’ Horton asked, wondering if the severed hand could be his. Perhaps the Jewson family had seen fit to dish out their own form of punishment, though from what Horton knew of them he thought it unlikely.
‘No idea. Dennings and Marsden are out making enquiries but you know what they’ll get from Wright’s known associates – sod all.’
‘Are any of his clothes and belongings missing?’
‘Hard to tell because we’ve no idea what he had to begin with. There’s nothing in his bedsit to indicate where he’s gone, but a passport was issued to him four years ago and that’s missing. There’s an all ports alert out for him and I’ve got an officer at the international port showing his photograph around.’
Horton knew though, just as Uckfield did, that Alfie didn’t necessarily have to board one of the continental or Channel Island ferries, it would be easy for him to slip across to the continent on a private boat if he knew anyone who owned one, and Horton doubted that. And although he could have stolen one Alfie knew as much about seafaring as he did about space travel. Then it suddenly occurred to Horton that Alfie might have been enticed on to a private boat by the promise of escaping prison, and once there its owner had killed and mutilated him, as revenge for a crime Alfie had previously committed against the boat owner. Was the hand Alfie Wright’s? He was about to relay the news of the gruesome discovery but Uckfield hadn’t finished yet.
‘Stringer said he was most disappointed that Alfie had decided not to show. Disappointed! I told him that Alfie would be more than disappointed when I got hold of him and I will.’
Horton hoped so too. ‘And he’s no idea where Alfie’s gone?’
‘He says not,’ Uckfield replied, his tone making it perfectly clear he didn’t believe that. ‘And that skinny bint from the local rag was there. So you can imagine the headlines in tomorrow’s newspaper.’
Uckfield was referring to Leanne Payne, the crime reporter. Wright’s disappearance might distract her from news of the severed hand but he wasn’t counting on it.
‘Wonder Boy’s wetting his pants over it, says we should have had more evidence to have Wright remanded,’ Uckfield continued with disgust. ‘He bloody well reviewed all the evidence himself and said it was watertight. He’s covering his arse quicker than a patient faced with an enema. Scared it will bugger up his promotion chances.’
ACC Dean’s claims came as no surprise to Horton, he was passing the buck just as Uckfield and DCI Bliss frequently did when it suited them but Horton wasn’t going to say. It was time to break the news. ‘We’ve got a severed hand, Steve.’
Uckfield blinked then scowled. ‘I hope it’s Alfie Wright’s,’ he said sourly.
‘That depends when he went walkabout. The mortuary attendant reckons it’s about two to three days old. Dr Clayton is in London but should be back later this afternoon to give us more. It’s not an accidental death,’ and Horton explained why. ‘Who would want to hack off Alfie’s hand?’
‘Me for starters,’ Uckfield growled. ‘And I’d throw the rest of his scrawny body to the fish. Reckon David Jewson’s family would too, we’d better ask them when they last saw the runt.’ He hauled himself up. ‘If the fingerprints match Alfie Wright’s then I’ll buy everyone a pint, even that drippy git, Stringer. I might even stretch to include that incompetent Crown Prosecutor.’ He crossed to his door, threw it open, and bellowed for Trueman to join them. When he arrived within seconds, Uckfield said, ‘The Inspector’s found some body parts. Tell him.’
Horton did. Uckfield gave instructions for Trueman to set up another crime board and for Horton to get everything over to them. Dismissed, Horton diverted to the canteen and bought a packet of sandwiches. He stopped off at the vending machine outside CID and fetched a black coffee for himself and a tea for Cantelli. There was no sign of DC Walters in CID which meant he was still following up Tuesday’s petrol station robbery. The perpetrators had bored a large hole in the rear wall of a garage situated on one of the roads heading north out of the city and had then forced their way through to gain access to the shop where thousands of pounds of cigarettes and hundreds of pounds of alcohol had been stolen. It was the first of this kind of robbery and Horton hoped it would be the last, but he wasn’t banking on it.
He gave Cantelli his paper cup of tea and took the seat at the desk alongside him. Cantelli’s plastic container that usually held his sandwiches was empty. The gruesome discovery hadn’t put him off his delayed lunch but then both of them had seen worse. ‘So why hack off a hand?’ Horton asked, after relaying that Alfie Wright had gone walkabout. ‘Isn’t there something in the Bible about it? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, could it be revenge?’
‘That’s the right hand.’
‘It is a right hand.’
‘Matthew chapter five verse thirty,’ Cantelli said. ‘“And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee.”
‘I’m impressed. What does it mean?’ Horton peeled back the plastic film on his ham salad sandwiches.
‘Some say it’s to do with adultery, others claim it refers to masturbation.’
‘How?’ Horton asked surprised, biting into his sandwich.
‘The right hand is said to be one of the most important members of the body and therefore should be sacrificed rather than that we should commit sin and be poisoned by unholy thoughts and impure desires. The right hand is the organ of action to which the eye excites.’
Horton raised his eyebrows. ‘What if you’re left-handed,’ he replied somewhat cynically.
‘Or ambidextrous. Matthew’s well into this stuff. Chapter eighteen verse eight: “If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee.”’
Horton continued eating with a troubled frown. ‘Hope we’re not going to find his feet.’
‘Or eyes, because the next verse urges sinners to pluck out their eye and cast it out.’
Horton groaned. ‘Don’t tell me we’ve got a religious nutter on the patch.’
‘Probably got several of them.’
‘But mad enough to kill?’
‘If driven hard enough or insane, yep.’ Cantelli answered. Walters ambled in eating a jam doughnut. Cantelli continued. ‘Alfie’s got some nasty associates. I wouldn’t put it past one of them to lop off his hand. But I can’t see why they’d put it in a container, although there aren’t many brain cells amongst them so they probably thought it would sink.’
‘What would sink?’ Walters asked, flopping on to the chair at his desk and wiping the jam from his chin. Cantelli told him while Horton finished his lunch. Cantelli asked Walters what he’d turned up on the petrol station robbery.
‘No witnesses, no one heard anything, or saw anything, and there are no prints, a phantom petrol station robber.’
Except the theft wasn’t imaginary, thought Horton. He wasn’t surprised that Walters had gleaned nothing. The Golden Hour following the crime, when evidence was fresh and witnesses could come forward with useful information, wasn’t much help in this instance because it had taken place between one and two a.m. Tuesday morning, which meant there were very few people about. In fact none given that it had been a bitterly cold morning, and the garage wasn’t in a fashionable area of the town so no one around to take and post photographs and videos on the internet.
Walters said he’d take another look at the social media websites in case anyone had posted anything or one of the villains had been stupid enough to brag about it. Horton thought it unlikely given that it appeared to be a professional job but then villains could and often did behave foolishly, thankfully.
He rose and entered his office. Pulling open his slatted blinds he glanced up at the leaden sky. It certainly looked as though it was going to snow. He flicked on his computer and turned his attention to his emails. There was one from the Centre for the Study of Missing Persons, which was part of Portsmouth University. He knew the centre well from the research it conducted, the workshops and conferences it held and the information it published. Also with regards to the work it did with police forces around the UK and overseas. It was thirty years too late to help find his mother, Jennifer, and even if it had existed in some crude form then, Horton doubted anyone attached to it would have been allowed to discover any vital information about her disappearance because his own recent research had unearthed the fact that, incredible as it seemed, Jennifer had been working for British Intelligence.
He thought the email must be an invitation to a seminar. He didn’t recognize the name of the sender, a Dr Carolyn Grantham, but then he didn’t know everyone who worked there. His body stiffened as, scanning it, a name leapt out at him. Holding his breath he rapidly read that Dr Grantham was conducting research into missing persons cases of over twenty-five years standing and she wondered if she could meet him to discuss the disappearance of his mother, Jennifer Horton.
His heart skipped several beats. Why Jennifer? Why now when no one had been the slightest bit interested in her for just over thirty years? How much did Dr Grantham know? If it was just what was on the official file then it would be practically nothing because Jennifer’s disappearance had only been cursorily investigated in 1978 and never since, not even by him until a year ago, when a case he’d been working on had led him to question the validity of what he’d been told as a child, that she’d grown tired of having a kid in tow and had run off with a man.
In January, Detective Chief Superintendent Sawyer of the Intelligence Directorate had entered the fray. He’d been, and was still as far as Horton knew, very keen to enlist Horton’s help in flushing out the man Jennifer was believed to have absconded with, a master criminal wanted for several international jewellery and art thefts across the continent whom the Intelligence Directorate had code-named Zeus. Horton hadn’t played ball. Sawyer could make a request for him to be seconded but so far he hadn’t and he couldn’t force him to work on the case because he’d be emotionally compromised. Perhaps Sawyer had instructed this Dr Grantham to make contact. It was Sawyer’s way of getting more information and Horton’s cooperation. Equally Lord Eames could have set this particular chain of enquiry in motion in order to discover how far Horton had got with his investigations, because Horton firmly believed that Eames was connected with British Intelligence and he knew Eames had been acquainted with Jennifer. Horton wouldn’t put it past either of them. There was only one way to find out.
He punched the number into his mobile phone and with a racing heart waited for her to answer. She did and quickly. Horton announced himself and said a little stiffly, ‘I received your email.’
‘I know how painful this must be for you.’
Did she? Horton doubted it.
‘And of course you don’t have to tell me anything but if we could meet up and I could explain why I’m interested then you can tell me to get lost.’
His first reaction was to refuse, but that was an emotional response and the wrong one. ‘When?’ he asked, keeping his tone neutral.
‘Tonight if you’re not busy?’
How could he be when every night was the same except for when he was working on a serious crime and the severed hand was not his investigation and neither was the hunt for Alfie Wright.
‘Where?’
‘I’ll buy you a drink. The Reef at Oyster Quays.’
It was a trendy bar on the waterfront which was frequented by students.
‘Eight o’clock,’ she suggested.
‘How will I recognize you?’
‘I’ll be the only person over the age of thirty-four,’ she said lightly.
‘OK.’
He rang off and immediately called up the internet. First he checked the University of Portsmouth website but she wasn’t listed as being a member of staff either at the University or at the Centre for the Study of Missing Persons. Next he entered her name in the general search engine and found she was mentioned on a number of professional and social media websites. There were a few photographs of her and he found himself studying an attractive dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties with an engaging smile and a long list of academic qualifications, as well as published research papers and articles to her name. She had a BA in Criminology and a PhD in Investigative Psychology. Her specialist areas and the papers and articles she’d had published were on missing persons and media bias; the costs of missing persons investigations and the repeat reports to the police of missing people, their locations and characteristics. Jennifer’s disappearance didn’t fit with any of those, there had been no media coverage, the investigation had cost nothing because only one police officer had been sent to follow it up, PC Adrian Stanley, and he was now dead, and there were certainly no repeated reports of her missing because she’d only vanished the once, on a foggy November day in 1978.
Work intruded, and Horton spent the next four hours answering phone calls, replying to emails, reading reports and briefing Bliss, who had returned from a meeting. She wasn’t best pleased with the lack of progress on the petrol station robbery. He wasn’t either but she regarded any failure on his part as a sign of his incompetence. Ever since her promotion and transfer from a station outside the city to Portsmouth and CID just over a year ago she’d been looking for a way to get him out of her ponytail. So far she hadn’t succeeded but Horton knew it would only be a matter of time, unless she managed to wangle herself a higher profile position in another unit and the sooner the better as far as he was concerned. He told her about the discovery of the hand and that he had reported it to Uckfield and that they were awaiting Dr Clayton’s further examination of it.
At six thirty Cantelli popped his head around the door to say he was off home and that Clive Westerbrook hadn’t been in to make his statement. That surprised Horton. Westerbrook had had plenty of time to return his boat to the marina and drive back to Portsmouth.
‘I’ve tried the mobile number he gave Elkins, there’s no answer. Do you want me to send a unit round to his flat? He lives at Spring Court.’
That wasn’t very far from the station. Horton said he’d call in on his way home or rather before his meeting with Dr Grantham. The more he considered Westerbrook’s no show though the more concerned he grew. He’d certainly looked unwell at Oyster Quays and Elkins had said Westerbrook had a weak heart. Perhaps he’d been taken ill heading back to Fareham Marina but if that was the case then his boat would have been found in the harbour and reported to the harbour master. Maybe it had been.
He rang through to them but there had been no such incidents. There was no point enquiring at the marina to see if Westerbrook’s boat was there because the marina office was closed now and Horton certainly wasn’t going to walk the dark pontoons searching for it. Perhaps Westerbrook needed more time to recover from the shock of his discovery and intended to come into the station tomorrow morning.
Just before eight, Horton headed north towards Spring Court. Light flakes of snow were falling. He could see several lights, including coloured Christmas ones, shining and blinking in the windows of some of the flats. The building backed on to a band of trees and the motorway. Horton could hear the roar of the traffic as he pressed the buzzer to flat sixteen. Still no answer. He tried again with the same result. Maybe he should call up and effect an entry, but surely that wasn’t necessary. Westerbrook had probably gone out for something to eat, or was with a friend or partner, talking over his ordeal. He glanced at his watch. It was five past eight and he was late for his meeting. He climbed on the Harley and with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension made for The Reef at Oyster Quays, hoping that Dr Grantham would still be there.