Andy Horton took Violet Ducale’s delicate hand with its paper-thin skin in his large, strong one, taking care not to crush it, but found her grip surprisingly firm. He returned the pressure with a smile as she nodded him into the high-backed chair across a round, waist-high table in the conservatory which they had to themselves. It overlooked impressive landscape gardens complete with a working fountain. She was fragile and attractive, even at eighty-nine, with clear skin, and he saw at once that nothing but honesty would be acceptable. She reminded him so much of his foster mother, Eileen, Violet’s niece, that he felt a great sadness tinged with guilt. He regretted bitterly not telling Eileen how much she and Bernard had meant to him – a difficult and rebellious teenager with a chip on his shoulder and a great deal of pain and anger inside him.
‘They’ll bring coffee and cake shortly,’ Violet said. She spoke without any accent or tremor.
She was dressed smartly in a soft-pink cashmere jumper and black trousers and wore a pearl necklace, earrings and some expensive rings on her bony fingers, although not on the third finger of her left hand. Her lipstick gave a hint of pink and her spectacles were fashionable and suited the shape of her lean face. Violet Ducale, like the Guernsey nursing home, just off St Georges Esplanade, exuded good taste, exclusivity and expense – none of the neglect and smells of sickness, urine and death he was familiar with as a police officer in some of the nursing homes in his home city of Portsmouth, seventy miles to the north across the English Channel. Guernsey, a small island just nine miles by six, situated in the bay of St Malo, was geographically closer to France than it was to England, being only twenty-seven miles from the Normandy coast. But it, and its neighbouring islands, were British Crown dependencies, although with their own legislatures.
She said, ‘We won’t be disturbed. We’re far enough away from the other old cronies not to be overheard. And if they do shuffle along here, I’ll soon get rid of them even though I doubt they’d be able to hear what we say, let alone understand. Deaf and batty, most of them.’ She smiled as his expression must have betrayed his surprise at her turn of phrase.
‘Do you like it here?’ he asked, curious and interested.
‘I’d rather be out there.’
‘In the garden?’
‘No. On the sea.’
‘You sail?’ he asked, warming to her even more. It was something he was passionate about.
‘I did, once, a long time ago.’ She looked reflective and sad for a moment and Horton was filled with a desire to take her to the sea and maybe even out on it.
Their coffee and cake duly arrived and the assistant retreated. Violet slowly pressed down the plunger in the cafetière with her lined and liver-spotted, slender hand, but it was steady as she poured him a coffee. She studied him with keen, intelligent blue eyes. After a moment, she said, ‘I wondered what you looked like.’
His heart skipped a beat. ‘You and Eileen talked about me?’
‘No, she wrote to me, not long after you went to live with her and her husband.’
‘What did she say?’ He took a swallow of coffee to disguise his eagerness.
‘That you’d had it tough.’
‘So do a lot of people,’ he answered lightly but felt the slight tightening in his stomach at the memory of his bewilderment and desperate hopelessness following those dark days after his mother had abandoned him at the age of ten. The scars never really healed. For years he’d tried to push them away. He thought he’d succeeded until an investigation thirteen months ago had re-opened them and revealed that Jennifer’s disappearance was not down to her desire to be rid of a kid in order to run off with a lover, as he’d always been told, but was instead a tangled web of lies, treachery and murder, the trail of which he was still following to get to the truth. His visit here was just another leg in his tortuous journey and one he didn’t think for a moment would give him all the answers. In fact, he’d wondered as he had flown here from Southampton that morning if it would give him any at all.
He said, ‘Did Eileen say how I came to be fostered by her and Bernard?’ It was a question he was very keen to find the answer to because he’d discovered that there was no official record of it. His social services’ file had been lost, or destroyed, or perhaps even taken by someone, but the fact that he was able to spend his teenage years from the age of fourteen with the Litchfields without being disturbed meant someone had enough clout with the authorities to make that happen. Violet Ducale said that Eileen had never mentioned it. Maybe she hadn’t. Horton watched her take a sip of coffee.
‘How did Eileen die?’ she asked after carefully replacing the cup in its saucer.
‘Cancer. I was with her at the end.’
‘I’m glad of that. I wish I could have seen her but …’
‘I didn’t know you existed. Eileen never told me about you and there was nothing in her personal belongings to indicate she had any relations. I only found out about you a month ago, from a neighbour of hers. Or rather, I discovered that she had made a comment to a neighbour about how much she loved Guernsey. From there I learned she had a twin brother, Andrew, and an aunt, you.’
‘And you sent Inspector Guilbert to check me out and obtain those photographs of the twins in their teens.’
‘Yes.’ Horton had met John Guilbert of the States of Guernsey Police some years ago on a joint drugs operation that had involved a run from Portsmouth to the Channel Islands. They’d immediately hit it off and remained good friends. Horton didn’t find friendship easy. His childhood had taught him never to trust, but both Guilbert and Horton’s Portsmouth CID sergeant, Barney Cantelli, were the exceptions. However, neither man knew of the depths of his research into the truth behind his mother’s disappearance. And neither man would pry. Horton knew he could trust both implicitly but he found it hard to confide.
He said, ‘Why didn’t Eileen tell me about you? Did you row?’
‘Of course not.’ Her surprise at his question was genuine. ‘We simply lost touch over the years. Eileen left Guernsey in 1961 for London and the Civil Service and Andrew went to Cambridge. There was nothing for them to come back here for.’
‘Except you.’
She smiled. ‘There was no need for either of them to do that. I had a busy life. I was personal assistant to Vincent Zuber, the financier. He was founder and president of Zuber Bank, now Manleys.’
Horton hadn’t heard of them.
‘They were world-renowned in the sixties, seventies and eighties,’ she explained. ‘Vincent left me a very generous legacy and I have an excellent pension not to mention investments. It’s how I can afford to spend my declining days here. I had my own life to lead and Eileen and Andrew had theirs.’
But Eileen hadn’t stayed working for the Civil Service in London. According to the neighbour Horton had spoken to in December, she had ended up as a typist at the Inland Revenue in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1978, where she had met Bernard, who had been serving in the RAF Police during the Troubles. Bernard had been shot in the shoulder while patrolling the airfield at RAF Aldergrove in 1978 and had returned to Portsmouth, or rather Gosport, and the then Royal Navy Hospital at Haslar, now closed, a location Horton believed his mother, Jennifer, had been making for on the day she had disappeared in November 1978. He had no proof of that except for a set of numbers inscribed on the reverse of a manila envelope bequeathed to him by a dying man, Dr Quentin Amos, who had known Jennifer when she had been a typist at the London School of Economics and Amos had been a lecturer there. The numbers tallied with the grid location of Haslar Marina, which hadn’t existed in 1978 but was a stone’s throw from the hospital and situated very close to the heavily secured Fort Monckton, allegedly a communications training centre for MI5.
‘Did you keep the letter Eileen sent you?’ Horton asked, already guessing the answer, and he was correct.
‘No, and I have nothing personal belonging to either of the twins. When you move into this sort of place,’ she waved an elegant arm around the surroundings, ‘you have to get rid of a lot of things, and besides, when I go, who would want them? They’d all end up on the fire or the waste tip.’ She smiled as though to show she didn’t care. Horton returned it but he wasn’t certain she was telling the truth. Was it coincidence he was named after her nephew? Was Andrew Ducale his father? Did she know that? Perhaps that was why he’d been placed with Eileen, who’d had no children of her own. Perhaps that was what Eileen had told her aunt in that letter and in subsequent conversations despite Violet’s denial they’d not kept in touch. Or had Andrew told his aunt that?
‘When did you last see them?’
‘At their father’s funeral – my brother – in 1967.’
Horton’s ears pricked up at that. It was a year he was particularly interested in. He reached across to his sailing jacket which he’d discarded on entering the nursing home and retrieved a piece of paper from the pocket, saying, ‘I believe I saw Andrew last June. He came into the marina where I live on board my small yacht. He was on a motor boat.’
Horton recalled the well-built, athletic man, about mid-sixties with an air of command and intelligence. He was almost certain it was the same man he’d seen years ago when he’d come home from school early, talking to his foster father, Bernard. There was something about his bearing and Horton had remembered him because he’d admired the motorbike he’d ridden away on. Bernard had said nothing about the visitor and Horton had never asked about him.
He continued, ‘He claimed to have been assaulted but I didn’t believe him. I think he used that as an excuse to make contact with me.’ Horton didn’t tell her that Andrew Ducale had also used an alias – Edward Ballard. But on seeing the pictures of Ducale in his teens, Horton had been convinced he had been looking at the same man over forty years later on his boat. There was the same shape of face, the same bone structure and the same penetrating eyes.
Unfurling the piece of paper and handing it across to Violet, Horton said, ‘After he left my boat and the marina, I found a photograph he had pushed behind one of the cushions. That’s an enlarged copy of it.’ She took it with a puzzled expression as he continued, ‘As you can see, it is of six men. It was taken during the student sit-in protest at the London School of Economics in 1967, the same year you last saw Andrew. My mother worked there as a typist. Do you remember Andrew talking about any of the men?’ He began to point them out. ‘The man on the far right is Zachary Benham, the one next to him is Antony Dormand and the man with the beard who has his arm around Dormand is Rory Mortimer.’
‘No, the names mean nothing to me, Mr Horton.’
‘Andy, please.’
She gave a brief smile. ‘I’m sorry, I have no recollection of Andrew talking of the men you mention.’ But her eyes were still fixed on the picture and he saw a frown of puzzlement cross her face.
‘The one next to Mortimer with the Beatle haircut is James Royston and the one on the far left is Timothy Wilson. Sadly, all those men are dead.’ He didn’t tell her how they had died. She didn’t need to know. ‘The fair man between Wilson and Royston is Richard Eames.’
Her head shot up. His heart skipped a beat. Clearly, she recognized that name. He felt a small stab of victory. Maybe this wasn’t a waste of time after all. ‘You know him?’ he asked, curbing his excitement.
‘Well, yes, and his brother, Gordon. Are you sure that’s Richard?’ She studied the picture again then looked at him as he nodded before adding, ‘But, yes, I can see it is now.’
‘Andrew’s spoken about him?’ he asked eagerly.
‘He and Richard were friends years ago. In fact, we all were. Richard and his brother, Gordon, their father, Lord William Eames, Eileen and I, we all used to go sailing here in Guernsey.’
So now he had a connection between Andrew Ducale, his foster mother, Eileen, and Lord Richard Eames, the man he believed knew a great deal about Jennifer’s disappearance but wasn’t going to say. Where that took him, though, he had no idea.
‘When was the last time you were in contact with Richard Eames?’
She looked vexed at the question for a second before she answered, ‘Years ago. I don’t remember when.’ She picked up her coffee cup. ‘His brother, Gordon, died very young. Drugs, I believe.’ She sipped her coffee. Horton thought she seemed distracted.
He’d read that Gordon Eames’s life had spiralled out of control somewhere between the mid-1960s and early 1970s and he’d died in Australia in 1973, leaving Richard Eames, the only surviving son, heir to his father’s vast estate and fortune and successor to the peerage.
‘Did Andrew speak of either man?’
‘No. As I said, I haven’t seen Andrew since 1967.’
The truth or a lie? She replaced her coffee cup and held his eyes boldly, almost defiantly, and there was a sharpness in her tone that hadn’t been there before.
‘Aren’t you curious or worried about him?’ he asked.
‘Sometimes.’
‘He could be dead.’ But Horton knew he wasn’t. He’d checked with the General Register Office database.
‘I would have been informed if that were the case. I’m his only living relative,’ she answered somewhat crisply.
‘He could have married and had children.’ But not according to the General Register.
‘If that were so then one of them would have told me. I’m sorry I can’t help you find him, if that’s what you want.’ Her voice was brisk and she looked troubled.
It was. But he hadn’t finished yet. After a moment, he said lightly, ‘What was Andrew doing in 1967?’
‘I don’t understand what you mean?’ She glanced away, into the garden.
Oh, but she did. ‘Where was he working? He must have finished his degree by then.’
‘Oh, I see. Yes, he was working at the Foreign Office.’
Which was what Horton had half expected and in Andrew Ducale’s case he believed it to be a euphemism for British Intelligence. He also believed that Richard Eames had been employed by them and probably still worked for them, likewise Ducale. He had nothing to back that up except for the fact that all his attempts to find an employment record or further details for Ducale, or his alias, Edward Ballard, had drawn a blank. All he’d managed to discover was that Ducale had got a first-class honours degree from Cambridge in oriental studies. After that, nothing.
When his silence continued, she said, ‘Why are you interested in that picture, aside from the fact that you believe Andrew left it for you?’
‘Because it has something to do with my mother’s disappearance. I’m not sure how. But I believe Andrew knows what happened to her after she walked out of our flat and vanished but couldn’t tell me directly.’ And Horton sincerely wished he had instead of leaving him to stumble about trying to fit together the pieces of what had turned out to be a very complex puzzle. He was still far short of completing it.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Horton, but I can’t help you.’
The continued use of his surname might have been from habit or it might have been her way of putting the conversation firmly on a business footing. She consulted her jewelled watch. The gesture and her manner made it clear to him that the interview was over. Should he press her? He’d like to but from the set of her mouth he knew from experience he’d get nothing more. Perhaps she was tired. Perhaps he’d stirred up too many painful memories. But something about their conversation had unsettled her.
He took a card from his wallet and handed it to her, asking her to call him at any time if she remembered anything that could help him or if she heard from Andrew, but he knew she wouldn’t. He left knowing that even if he returned tomorrow to press her she’d stick to the same story. He had enough experience of suspects to gauge that. But Violet Ducale was not a suspect in one of his cases.
He took his farewell, silently acknowledging that she did look more tired than when he had arrived, and struck out towards the sea in the damp, chilly drizzle. He had two hours to kill before his dinner with Guilbert. It would be good to catch up. His thoughts veered back to the photograph he’d shown Violet Ducale and what he had discovered about the men in it: James Royston had died of a drugs overdose in 1970; Timothy Wilson had been killed in a motorbike accident while returning to Southampton from Lord Eames’ Wiltshire estate in 1969; Zachary Benham had died in a fire along with twenty-three other men in a psychiatric hospital near Woking in 1968 and Rory Mortimer had been murdered by one of the other men, Antony Dormand, who Horton had traced to Northwood Abbey on the Isle of Wight in October.
He halted and leaned on the railings, staring out to sea in the gathering twilight, recalling Dormand’s confession. He claimed to have killed Mortimer because Mortimer had been spying for the Russians in the days of the Cold War, and that Zachary Benham had been sent to that psychiatric hospital to unearth a spy and had died in the attempt. He’d also said that Jennifer had been involved in intelligence gathering in 1967, informing on the Radical Student Alliance who had been engaged in violent protests and demonstrations in London. But Dormand had gone further. He’d said that Jennifer had also been involved in providing intelligence on, or possibly for, the IRA in 1978 at the time of her disappearance, which coincided with bloody carnage on the streets of Britain with bombs going off in Bristol, Coventry, Liverpool, Manchester and Southampton. There had also been the horrific bombing before then at Aldershot Barracks in 1972 and in Manchester City, Victoria Station, King’s Cross and Oxford Street in 1973. And in 1973 Jennifer had left London with him for Portsmouth.
His mobile rang. It was Guilbert. Perhaps he was just checking that they were still on for their meal tonight but as Horton answered it he thought it more than likely that work had intruded and Guilbert might have to delay or cancel. He hoped the former rather than the latter.
‘I’ve got a death, Andy,’ Guilbert said apologetically. ‘A woman’s been found dead on the Condor Commodore Clipper ferry which sailed from Portsmouth this morning.’
Horton often saw the vessel in Portsmouth Harbour but he’d never travelled on it and he’d never had cause to board it in the line of his work, thankfully.
‘On the surface it looks like natural causes but the officer who attended called us in. My sergeant’s on board now. The dead woman was a foot passenger. She was found in her cabin, which was locked. We don’t have a name for her yet because she wasn’t travelling on to France so she didn’t need to show her passport at the Portsmouth terminal, and she paid cash for both her single ticket and her cabin. No visible signs of violence but it’s best to be certain. Don’t want it rebounding on us later. DS Martell’s called in the police doctor. He and the scene of crime officers are already on board.’
Guilbert was cautious, as he was right to be. He was a painstaking, thorough cop but with an intuitive feel for cases and an instinctive understanding of people including the criminal class.
‘I know you’re not here officially, Andy, but as Portsmouth is your patch I thought it might be helpful if you could join me.’
Horton didn’t hesitate. He said he would be with Guilbert within ten minutes. Briskly he struck out towards the lights of St Peter Port, the marina and the Condor ferry terminal, sorry for the death but glad to put his personal machinations behind him for a while.