Horton found Chris Howgate in his small office off the main factory floor of his sail-making business in the building adjoining the marina. His staff of four were busy cutting out sail cloth on a large table. Horton nodded to them as he went through. He knew Howgate well and, after a brief exchange of greeting, Horton explained why he was there. Howgate, a round-faced muscular man in his early forties, looked concerned.
‘Dai Elkins asked me if I’d seen anyone hanging around the lifeboat station on Tuesday night and I told him I hadn’t because I didn’t go there and neither did anyone else. There was no training or meeting and it was a miracle we weren’t called out in that storm or last night, but then anyone with an ounce of brain wouldn’t have gone out in such atrocious weather. Point is that not everyone has an ounce of brain.’
Horton knew that.
‘Only last week we had to rescue a man off the Bembridge Ledge who had bought a boat and a road atlas and was attempting to cross the Channel to France. Can you believe it?’
Sadly, Horton said he could.
He showed Howgate a photograph of Peter Freedman and asked if he recognized him. Howgate shook his head. He didn’t know the name or recognize Vivian Clements either. Horton said he’d need the contact details of all the volunteers to ask them the same questions.
‘You can ask Roger Stillmore now. He works for me and he’s been on the lifeboat for years. He doesn’t go out on shouts any more but he still helps out.’ Howgate rose, crossed to his office door and hailed Stillmore, who appeared a minute later.
Howgate made the introductions. Stillmore, a sturdy man in his late fifties with fine silver-grey hair and a gap in his front teeth, examined the picture of Peter Freedman but after a few seconds he shook his head and did the same for Clements. ‘I’ve never seen either man before.’ He and Howgate also confirmed they knew no one called Constance Clements. Horton hadn’t really expected them to but for thoroughness had thought he’d ask. He did the same for Dennis Lyster. At least he’d had a connection with the sea, according to his son, albeit a long time ago.
‘It sounds familiar,’ Stillmore said, frowning thoughtfully.
‘He was a boat owner about eighteen or twenty years ago. He died last March. His body was found just off Ryde Pier. Ryde Inshore Lifeboat attended.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Stillmore’s expression cleared. ‘I read about the shout in our news bulletin. Terribly sad that.’
Horton should have considered that the news would have been circulated to all lifeboat crew and volunteers.
‘I guess he never got over it.’
‘Losing his job, you mean?’ Horton said.
‘Did he? I didn’t know that. No, I meant what happened years ago. It never really goes away.’
‘What doesn’t?’ Horton asked puzzled and deeply curious.
‘The death of a child at sea. That is if it’s the same Lyster.’ Stillmore added hastily, seeing Horton’s surprise, ‘He had a son called Rowan. I remember that because it’s the same name as the hospice and my dad was in the hospice at the time.’
‘Yes, it’s the same man,’ Horton answered, keenly interested. No one had mentioned this and he was certain it hadn’t come up at the inquest, otherwise Cantelli would have said. So why the silence? ‘Tell me about it,’ he said eagerly.
Howgate gestured Stillmore into the seat beside Horton.
‘Dennis Lyster was sailing his yacht, a twenty-eight-foot Westerley, just off the Isle of Wight when he got into difficulty. He shouldn’t have been out in the first place. The wind was force six and rising to near gale force, and the waves were like walls of water, eight feet and rising. Lyster had two young boys on board, aged ten. One wasn’t clipped on.’
Horton raised his eyebrows.
‘I know, bloody stupid,’ Stillmore said with sorrow. ‘Lyster had reefed in and was running on his engine alone. The child was swept overboard. Lyster engaged man overboard manoeuvres but in that sea and wind it was near-on impossible. He sent out a mayday. The boy who entered the water was wearing a life jacket but this was February.’
And Horton knew what that meant. The sea temperature would have been about forty-one degrees Fahrenheit – bloody cold. Horton shuddered at the thought. He couldn’t even bear to think how he’d feel if anything happened to Emma. Fear gripped his heart. He hoped to God that Catherine made sure Emma was safe when she was on board her boyfriend’s floating gin palace and when she sailed on her grandfather’s yacht.
‘We got the child out of the water and he was airlifted to hospital by the coastguard helicopter but the poor little mite was already dead. Dennis Lyster was distraught, as you can imagine.’
‘Can you remember the name of the child who died?’
‘He was called Cary as in Cary Grant. I remember thinking at the time this poor little mite is never going to grow up like Cary Grant. I can’t remember his surname. He was about ten – the same age as the other boy on the yacht, Rowan Lyster.’
‘He wasn’t related to Lyster then?’
‘Not as far as I know. I couldn’t attend the inquest because it was held on the day of my dad’s funeral.’
Horton could get the name from the marine accident investigation report and the coroner’s office. He said, ‘Have you seen or spoken to Dennis Lyster since then?’
‘No. I read about him being fished out of the sea and it possibly being suicide and thought that it must have been haunting him for years.’
And what about Rowan? Had it haunted him? It certainly didn’t seem that way because Rowan had pursued a career on the sea. Maybe he’d pushed it aside, or perhaps he’d been too young to realize the full horror of it.
‘Do you remember Dennis Lyster’s wife, Evelyn?’
‘No. Like I said, I wasn’t at the inquest so didn’t get to meet her.’
‘And she wasn’t there when you got Dennis Lyster and his son safely back to the shore?’
‘No. They were taken to Bembridge where an ambulance was waiting. The boy was suffering from hypothermia and both father and son were in a state of shock.’
And Evelyn Lyster would have been in Portsmouth and wouldn’t have had time to get to the island before the ambulance. Maybe she had never got there but waited for her son and husband to return home. Perhaps she’d even been abroad, working. And what of Cary’s parents? Who had broken the news to them? Where had they been at the time? Who were they? Did this have anything to do with the three deaths: Evelyn Lyster, Peter Freedman and Vivian Clements – four if you counted Dennis Lyster? But how could it?
Horton thanked them both warmly and returned to his Harley, mulling over what Roger Stillmore had told him. What had happened to Cary’s parents? Had Cary been their only child? How had the tragedy affected them? Maybe it had finally driven Dennis Lyster to suicide and his death wasn’t suspicious. But why hadn’t Evelyn Lyster mentioned it at the inquest? Perhaps she had just wanted to forget it and put it behind her. It explained why Dennis Lyster had worked overseas for so many years, though. Perhaps he’d been trying to put as much distance as he could between the place where the tragedy had occurred and himself. The marine accident investigation report would give him the details of Cary’s parents and from there they would be able to trace them. He didn’t want to disturb them though and bring back such harrowing memories unless he really had to. And the same might be said if they questioned Rowan about the tragedy. And he couldn’t see why they should or how it could have any bearing on the murders.
He made for the station but didn’t go inside. Instead he again headed for Gravity and found Ashmead in the shower room with a mop and bucket. ‘We’ve got a leaky pipe – the plumber’s on his way,’ he explained.
Horton asked him if Freedman had brought a rucksack or bag into the café on Tuesdays when he worked as a volunteer.
‘I never saw him with one.’
‘Did you ever see him leave carrying a bag of any kind?’
‘He might have done; I don’t know. It wasn’t the sort of thing I took notice of. Is it important?’
‘Probably not.’
Ashmead was looking drawn. The lack of funding was clearly getting to him. Horton hoped the strain wouldn’t prove too much and send him on a downward spiral to seek relief in alcohol. But soon Ashmead would get Freedman’s legacy and although Horton didn’t know how much that was he was certain it would help. A terrible thought flashed into his mind. He couldn’t believe that Glyn Ashmead would kill for money. But surely he had to believe the unbelievable – that was his job.
He asked Ashmead if he recognized the name Constance Clements but Ashmead shook his head and neither did he recognize a description of her. He didn’t seem to be lying, but nevertheless Horton considered the possibility that Constance might have donated some of her husband’s clothes to the charity, including that Gieves and Hawkes coat. It seemed the sort of thing that Vivian Clements might have worn and it fitted his measurements. Maybe it was Ashmead she had met and fallen in love with. But would Vivian Clements have hung on to so shabby a coat? Possibly if Constance had packed it away and then decided to have a clear-out.
But perhaps Freedman had told Constance Clements he volunteered at Gravity on Tuesdays and Constance had come here to see Freedman and she’d met Glyn Ashmead. They’d begun a relationship. She wanted rid of her husband and Ashmead wanted Freedman’s wealth. Maybe Freedman had told Ashmead that the centre was named in his will. Perhaps Glyn Ashmead was resentful of Freedman’s success. Perhaps their relationship went way back to when they had both been on the road.
He thought of that coat Freedman had been wearing when he’d been shot. Perhaps it had been Glyn Ashmead’s. He said he’d kept a belt as a reminder of his dark days on the streets in the hope that seeing it would ensure he’d never go down that route again but maybe it had been the coat he’d kept. Freedman had got hold of it and worn it and the other clothes as a taunt to Ashmead when they’d met by the lifeboat station. Ashmead had said that Freedman was contributing ten per cent of his income to the centre and the accountant had confirmed that but perhaps he hadn’t been giving it voluntarily; he had been forced to do so as blackmail money. Ashmead had something on Freedman which he had threatened to expose but finally Freedman had said enough was enough. He’d threatened to stop paying. Ashmead was desperate for money, not for himself but for the centre. Ashmead could have acquired the gun from Constance and shot Freedman, then killed Vivian Clements. But where did that leave them with Evelyn Lyster’s death? Neither Ashmead nor Constance could have done that, and why should either of them kill Dennis Lyster, if he had been killed.
‘Did Freedman ever talk about his family?’ Horton asked, postponing his line of thought for a moment.
‘All I knew was that he had been married.’
‘He still was when he died. No children. Did you meet him when you were both on the road?’
‘If I did I don’t remember him but then that’s hardly surprising considering I was inebriated most of the time.’
‘There’s a kind of camaraderie on the streets. You meet up with the same people on the same circuit and look out for one another.’
Ashmead gave a hollow laugh. ‘Only in the sense of what you can steal from them to fund that next drink or that next drug fix.’
‘Did you do drugs?’
‘Yes, and I didn’t ask where they came from so I had no idea of the toxic stuff I was taking. That, and the drink, scrambles your brain cells as you well know. It leaves its mark no matter what you tell yourself.’
‘What mark has it left on you?’ Horton asked solemnly, wondering if he was going to hear a confession. He tensed.
‘I get blinding headaches, sweats and memory loss.’
‘Does that mean that if I was to ask you where you were on Tuesday and Wednesday night, you’ll tell me you don’t remember?’
‘I was at home on Wednesday night alone, but I don’t know where I was on Tuesday night. All I can remember was travelling home from Southampton on the train from that fundraising conference and the next thing I was waking up at three in the morning, thankfully in my own bed, in my flat. You think I could have killed Peter, don’t you? Well, I didn’t. I don’t know how he died but there was no blood on my clothes, though they were damp.’ Ashmead let the water from the leaky pipe swirl around his shoes while Horton stood in the doorway. ‘I had no reason to kill Peter. He was generous with his time and money. There was no resentment and no history between us.’
‘He’s left half his estate to the centre.’
Ashmead’s surprise seemed genuine. He nodded knowingly. ‘You think I killed him for the money?’
‘You need it desperately,’ Horton pressed.
‘I’d rather have had him alive because he was more valuable for the work he did here helping others than the money.’
‘But without it the centre might have to close. Was the overcoat he was wearing when he died yours, Glyn?’
‘No.’
‘Did it belong to Constance Clements’ husband?’
‘I don’t know because I don’t know Constance Clements or her husband. She might have brought it in. I’m sorry, Andy, but I can’t help you. As far as I’m aware I didn’t kill Peter but if you want to search my bedsit and take my clothes for forensic examination then please go ahead.’
Could Ashmead have killed Freedman while suffering from a blackout? It was possible. And they’d have to ask Constance Clements if she knew Glyn Ashmead and gauge her reaction. Horton left feeling uncomfortable that he’d had to doubt Ashmead and that it had soured their relationship. It was his job, he told himself, to suspect everybody. Sometimes the job stank.