Horton made his way slowly back to the station. There were so many loose ends and it didn’t look as though they were ever going to tie them up. Horton felt they were going round in circles getting nowhere fast. He bought a coffee from the vending machine outside CID and found Cantelli at his desk. There was no sign of Walters.
‘He’s phoned in sick, says he’s caught Uckfield’s cold,’ Cantelli relayed with some scepticism.
Usually it was Walters’ gut playing him up because of all the fast food crap he ate. He probably just had a few sniffles or hadn’t relished the prospect of working on a Saturday. Cantelli, with his family and his sick mother, had much better reasons to spend his weekend at home, but Horton knew he’d never fabricate a story to do so. And he’d never duck out of an ongoing serious crime investigation unless it was absolutely vital. Horton asked how his mother was and was pleased to hear she was improving under Charlotte’s nursing care and in her grandchildren’s company.
‘I think she was lonely and depressed after dad’s death and too damn proud to admit it, even to her family,’ Cantelli added. ‘And, talking of families, I’ve got some interesting information from the head teacher of Rowan Lyster’s school, Saint Levan’s in Cornwall, a Mr Norman Fyning. He’s been headmaster for twenty-two years and is retiring at the end of this school year. He rang back to check I was legit. The school is very expensive judging by what I could see on the website and what Mr Fyning told me about the fees. Way beyond my budget and even Uckfield’s. It’s probably beyond the ACC’s. The Lysters’ jobs must have paid very well. It’s not Catholic and neither is Rowan Lyster. The school specializes in outdoor activities, as Rowan told us. It also has its own sailing ship, a fifty-six-foot gaff cutter, whatever that is.’
‘Lucky them.’ Horton didn’t bother to explain that a gaff cutter or rather a gaff-rigged boat described the type of sails used – it would only have gone over Cantelli’s head. ‘It sounds like the type of school I’d have enjoyed instead of the failing inner city one I was forced to attend.’
‘It sounds like hell on earth to me. The kids undertake ocean sailing, canoe racing, diving and triathlons, the poor little blighters.’
Horton smiled. He’d have lapped it up.
‘There’s mountaineering in the UK and abroad, cycling, running, swimming.’
‘I take it they do also have lessons.’
‘Must do but it’s not what you would call an academic school. It specializes in educating children of the wealthy and professional classes who don’t fit into mainstream education for some reason or another. Some are not academically bright and some have energy that needs to be channelled in certain directions, which was Fyning’s rather tactful description. They’re not necessarily problem children or kids who have got into trouble, he says, just strong-minded.’
‘And which description fits Rowan Lyster – not academically bright or wilful?’
‘Both, but he was very talented when it came to water sports, which was something Fyning said he would have liked to have discussed with Rowan’s parents, but he never met Dennis Lyster.’
‘Never!’
‘Yep, and Fyning only saw Evelyn Lyster once a year when she showed up for parents’ day. But he claims that isn’t unusual in the school’s case. Many of the parents are absent ones. Not that Fyning would say as much but it’s a dumping ground for unwanted kids of the well-to-do. They even keep the kids for the school holidays, take them on outbound trips and holidays abroad so that the parents don’t have to have them hanging round their neck for weeks on end, messing up their lives. I can’t see the point of having kids if you’re not going to be there to bring them up. Sorry, Andy, I didn’t mean that about—’
‘Forget it.’ Horton didn’t take offence. He knew what Cantelli meant and he would dearly have loved to have shared each and every day with his daughter. It made him think that maybe it was about time he did something to make sure he saw her more often despite Catherine’s attempts to prevent him. Emma was a weekly boarder at her school which was only eighteen miles to the north of Portsmouth. He brought his mind back to what Cantelli was saying.
‘Fyning said Evelyn Lyster was remarkably relaxed about her son’s progress and obviously Dennis Lyster must have been the same. The school fees were always paid on time, from a joint bank account, and all additional expenses were met without a quibble. Rowan rarely spent the holidays with his parents. He’d stay at the school or occasionally with a friend, or he’d go off with the school party on outward-bound adventures. Rowan didn’t seem bothered about his parents’ lack of interest in him. He was happy just as long as he was engaged in some kind of sporting activity, preferably on the water, and preferably on his own.’
‘Not a team player then.’
‘No. He had friendships but they didn’t last very long, not unless the boy or girl – it’s a co-ed school – was submissive. Fyning’s word, not mine. Rowan was extremely competitive. He excelled in sailing, especially when he was skipper, and in kayaking and windsurfing. Fyning said he wasn’t surprised that Rowan had gone on to become a European windsurfing champion. He was very focused and not a good loser. I got the impression Fyning was being generous and cautious with what he was saying. When I pressed him he claimed that Rowan was a strong personality and extremely determined.’
Interesting as this was Horton couldn’t see where it got them, but there were certain aspects in Cantelli’s report that intrigued him. ‘It’s odd that after nearly losing their son at sea in that tragedy the Lysters, instead of being even more protective towards Rowan, distanced themselves from him.’
‘What tragedy?’
Horton hadn’t brought Cantelli up to speed with his interview with Roger Stillmore. He did now and swiftly. Cantelli’s dark features looked sorrowful.
‘Poor little mite. The parents must have been devastated. Maybe Dennis Lyster blamed himself for the accident and the very sight of his son being alive reminded him too painfully of the loss of the other little boy and how he had let it happen.’
‘But you’d have thought Evelyn Lyster might have wanted to cling to her son even more given the death of the other child.’
‘Perhaps she just wasn’t the maternal type. Maybe her business meant more to her than her kid. It sounds like it judging by what Fyning said.’
Maybe but Horton thought it strange nonetheless. ‘I wonder how Rowan took being shunted off to school after the accident. Stillmore said it occurred in February when Rowan was ten. When did he start at that school?’
‘The beginning of April, just after Easter for the summer term. He was eleven the following August.’
‘And Fyning said nothing about the accident at sea?’ mused Horton. If he had Cantelli would have known about it.
‘I can call him back and ask him if he knew about it.’
‘And ask if Evelyn or Dennis Lyster told him about it, and if Rowan ever mentioned it. It was a pretty traumatic event for a child to have witnessed.’
‘Maybe he had counselling or blocked it out.’
‘Possibly. See what you can get on it from the marine accident investigation report. Details should be on their website.’ Horton asked if there had been any progress with the investigation from Trueman’s end.
‘Uckfield’s had to let Constance Clements go. She decided she wanted a lawyer. She’s been charged with intent to defraud the insurance company but we both know that won’t stick. Her brief will say she had no choice but to participate because she was bullied into it by her husband. Uckfield held back on charging her with knowing about the gun being in her husband’s possession.’
‘Hoping to get more before he does,’ Horton said.
Cantelli nodded. ‘The house-to-house around Milton Common has drawn a blank. There have been a few responses to the media appeal about Freedman’s coat and sightings of Clements in Milton. Trueman’s team are checking them out but he says that most of them sound like the usual cranks.’
‘Any news from ballistics on the gun that was used to kill Freedman?’
‘Yes. It’s the same gun that killed Clements. And Freedman’s wife has confirmed Freedman’s ID from the photograph she was shown.’
‘Her reaction?’
‘Surprise, relief, a touch of bitterness. Technically she’s still married and she’s been with her new partner for eight years. Freedman was drinking heavily after his garage business failed. She gave him an ultimatum: sober up or clear out. He chose the latter, or rather that’s her story. She told the officer who broke the news to her that that was the last she heard from him. She moved away and got on with her life. And no, she didn’t want to see his body.’
Horton relayed his interview with Glyn Ashmead, ending with the view that he didn’t want to consider him in the frame but thought they should. ‘It means we’ll have to ask Constance Clements if she knows him but we’ll wait on that for a while. Don’t want to be accused of harassing her.’
Horton entered his office. He tried to concentrate on his paperwork and write up his interviews but that tragedy at sea nagged at him. The fact the Dennis Lyster, an experienced sailor, had taken out his yacht when the weather was bad and the forecast was for worse didn’t make sense. And why take two small boys with him? It wasn’t the act of an experienced skipper and neither did it fit with a cautious man, which Dennis Lyster must have been. After all, most engineers were.
He sat back and considered what Cantelli had just told him. Why had the Lysters despatched their only son to a school hundreds of miles away after the fatality and rarely seen him? Why had Dennis Lyster stayed out of the country for so long? Why hadn’t Evelyn Lyster been anxious about her only child? It didn’t add up. Why didn’t Rowan seem affected by what had happened? Why had he taken up a career on the sea when his friend had died on it? Perhaps he’d faced his fears and overcome them, or as Cantelli had said, deliberately blocked it from his mind.
Then there were the dead boy’s parents. Where were they? How had they coped with life after so tragically losing their son at sea? Had they also been sailors? Had they blamed Dennis Lyster for their child’s death? Why had they allowed Cary to go sailing in such bad weather? Why had Evelyn Lyster permitted it? It could easily have been her child who’d died.
Ignoring the paperwork on his desk, Horton called up the coroner’s report on Dennis Lyster’s death. He was curious about a man who seemed to have been very elusive, especially after the tragedy at sea. Had he changed jobs so that he could escape the Solent and his wife and child who reminded him of it? Had it been a way of avoiding seeing the dead boy’s parents?
He read the background that Cantelli had relayed to him earlier. There was no mention by anyone about the tragedy at sea and how it might have affected Dennis Lyster. Why hadn’t Evelyn told the coroner that the incident might have returned to haunt him? Or that, having been involved in such an incident, perhaps he’d thought it only fitting he should take his own life by drowning as a form of punishment for a child’s death at sea while the child had been under his care? Or was he just reading too much into it?
Horton read on. There was a fair bit of information on the fact that Dennis Lyster had been made redundant from a job that he had held with the same company, the Paitak Corporation, for twenty-three years, which meant he hadn’t changed jobs after the tragedy. Maybe he had changed positions to encompass more travel. Horton read that Lyster had been a mining engineer. That wasn’t what Gina Lyster had told them. She’d said Dennis had been a civil engineer. Maybe Gina had thought they were the same thing. Possibly they were but Horton called up the company name on the Internet and soon found that they weren’t.
An idea began to form in the back of his mind. He rang the company’s UK office. It being Saturday, though, he got a security officer who told him the office was closed for the weekend and to ring back and speak to human resources on Monday. He then rang his former police colleague, Mike Danby, who now ran an impressive close protection and security company working for the famous, influential and rich, including Lord Eames, as well as some top corporations. A few minutes later he replaced the phone, his head spinning. He was about to call Cantelli in when he knocked and entered.
‘Fyning had no idea about any tragedy at sea or fatality. The Lysters never told him and Rowan never mentioned it and neither, as far as he was aware, did Rowan suffer nightmares or show any reluctance to go to sea,’ Cantelli announced, taking the seat across Horton’s desk. ‘Evelyn Lyster arrived with Rowan at the school on Friday the fourth of March, three weeks before Easter. She and Rowan were shown around the school and Rowan was told about the ethos and activities. Fyning knew that Rowan was already a fairly experienced sailor even at the age of ten but he didn’t know how good. Rowan stayed for the long weekend to familiarize himself with the activities and meet the other pupils. He showed no reluctance to join the school – in fact, he was very keen when he saw that he was more experienced and had a greater aptitude for water sports than most of the other pupils in his year.’
The tragedy at sea had occurred four weeks before that on the fourth of February. Horton sat back thoughtfully as Cantelli continued.
‘The boy who died was Cary Gamblin, parents Robin and Margaret. It occurred just off the Bembridge Ledge. Both the Bembridge and the Eastney lifeboats attended but Bembridge was already on a shout further round the island off Ventnor so the Eastney lifeboat reached there first, even then they were too late to save the boy. I’ve run a check on Robin and Margaret Gamblin; neither are registered as being dead or divorced. There’s also no record with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for either of them so they’re not working, or if they are they’re certainly not paying taxes and neither are they claiming benefit. They could be living abroad. Perhaps they moved away to try and start a new life somewhere. They might have emigrated. The last record I can find for Robin Gamblin is seventeen years ago. His last known occupation was an insurance broker. He’s got no previous and neither has Margaret Gamblin.’
Horton put this information with the ideas that had been swirling around his head, what he’d discovered on the Paitak Corporation website and what Mike Danby had told him. Eagerly, he sat forward. ‘I’ve been asking myself why an experienced sailor like Dennis Lyster would go sailing in such atrocious weather and take two small children with him. I think it was because he was scheduled to meet someone and couldn’t put it off.’
‘At sea?’ asked Cantelli dubiously.
‘Yes. Or perhaps in Bembridge Marina on the Isle of Wight. He could have been coming out of the marina or heading there but got blown off course. Or he struggled to get into the marina – the harbour’s quite tricky to navigate especially given that weather.’
‘But why take the children?’
‘For cover. A small yacht with children on board is much less likely to get stopped by the Border Agency.’
‘Not drugs!’ Cantelli cried, alarmed.
‘No, diamonds.’
Cantelli’s eyebrows shot up. Horton rapidly relayed what he’d discovered while a popular tune ran around his head, one his mother had sung before she had vanished – ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’. ‘According to the coroner’s report on Dennis Lyster, he wasn’t a civil engineer but a mining engineer. He worked for the Paitak Corporation for twenty-three years and Paitak are involved in mineral operations worldwide. In one mine alone in Canada they’ve produced over six million carats of white, high-quality gem diamonds. Gina Lyster told us that Evelyn worked as a freelance translator for many different types of business people – consultants, brokers, accountants and dealers in jewellery and gems.’ He watched Cantelli’s eyes widen as he quickly caught on.
Cantelli said, ‘Dennis was helping himself. What about security, though? Would Dennis have been able to get diamonds out?’
‘Apparently so. I’ve just spoken to Mike Danby. He says it’s not that difficult to steal diamonds if you’re working at the place where they’re being extracted. It happens all the time, apparently, although the advances in technology are making it more difficult – the introduction of intelligent security systems, thermal cameras, video analytics, fingerprint and facial recognition and the like – but theft still happens and he says will continue to happen. Jewels, gems and precious metals are a big temptation to the workers who are involved in mining them. As prices have risen, Danby said that gold, silver, platinum and diamonds have become more alluring. In a diamond mine it would be quite usual to have people stealing the diamonds from the process. The company can screen employees and put restrictions on them entering certain areas but they can’t legislate for everyone. And if an employee has worked for the same company for some time and has an exemplary record then there’s no reason not to trust him.’
‘Until he got caught,’ said Cantelli. ‘And Dennis did.’
‘My thoughts exactly. I’d like to know if he was really made redundant or got the sack. As he was a UK citizen his employment details would have been kept at the company’s UK office but there’s no one we can speak to until Monday. I think it’s possible that Dennis Lyster was stealing diamonds from his employers – not huge amounts and probably not on a regular basis, he was very careful not to get noticed. And Evelyn Lyster, through her network of contacts, was selling them on. Not to the usual diamond merchants or to any dodgy dealers but to her clients and those she met at the jewellery and gem trade fairs. Perhaps just a small quantity each time. And I think they’d been doing so for a number of years. Dennis was delivering to a client when the tragedy at sea struck. He had to go. The deal was lined up. Whoever was buying the diamonds was waiting for them.’
‘But why did Cary Gamblin go? Why not just take Rowan?’
Horton shrugged. ‘Perhaps the two boys were great mates and did everything together. After the tragedy, Dennis and Evelyn had to change the way they operated – they could no longer use Rowan as cover. They might have continued to use boats but not from Portsmouth. They didn’t want to be tied down with Rowan at school in Portsmouth so he was sent away, leaving them free to continue stealing and dealing to pay for their son’s expensive education and for Evelyn to buy expensive properties to clean the money and put some away in a Guernsey account. The Gamblins had no idea their son had been used to hide the Lysters’ criminal activities. And they probably never discovered that. When Dennis lost his job the gravy train came to an end and he was no longer useful.’
‘Evelyn killed him.’
‘Maybe, or perhaps she got Freedman to do it for her. We’re not sure how long they had known one another. She could have met him when he lived in Brighton or possibly she met him through a mutual client. Freedman was very skilled at eliciting confidences and perhaps Evelyn fell for him big time. When love comes in the door—’
‘Reason flies out of the window.’
‘Freedman killed Evelyn after making sure he could access the Guernsey account. And then someone killed him. Someone who has no idea what the Lysters have been up to but killed Freedman because she too, like Evelyn Lyster, was besotted with him.’
‘So we’re back to Constance Clements.’
But even though he’d suggested it Horton still wasn’t sure. Certain questions gnawed away at the back of his mind. He rapidly sifted through all the information he’d heard and seen over the last six days. Somewhere among it all was something that would make sense of these deaths.
Cantelli said, ‘Perhaps that nervy exterior of Constance Clements is just an act and underneath she’s clever and ruthless. She came up with the idea of an insurance fraud so that she could use the gun to kill Freedman and her husband. She could have used insurance scams before with some of her interior design clients. Or maybe she got the idea from Freedman. He probably knew all about car insurance scams having been a garage proprietor. He’d report a car had been stolen and then claim on the insurance when in reality he’d changed the registration numbers, arranged a re-spray and sold it off.’
Insurance. The gun theft had been an insurance scam. Why had Freedman dressed as a tramp to meet his killer? Was it possible? His brain scrambled to pull the threads together. Eagerly, he voiced one key thought that Cantelli had sparked.
‘Didn’t you say that Robin Gamblin had been an insurance broker?’
‘Yes, but we have no idea where he is now.’
‘Don’t we?’
After a moment, Cantelli’s expression registered astonishment as he quickly caught on. Excitedly, he said, ‘You mean he’s in the mortuary.’
‘If he is then it changes everything, or rather it makes certain elements of the case slot into place. Evelyn Lyster knew Freedman from before he went on the streets. From when he was Robin Gamblin.’
‘But his wife identified him.’
‘Only from a photograph. Glyn Ashmead did the formal identification at the mortuary and he said it was Peter Freedman because that’s who he knew him as. That’s who Ashmead had been told he was.’ Suddenly into Horton’s mind crashed and exploded his conversation with Violet Ducale. When he’d shown her the photograph from 1967 and told her the fair man, the second on the left between Timothy Wilson and James Royston, was Richard Eames her head had shot up. He’d asked her if she knew him and she’d said, Yes, and his brother, Gordon. Are you sure that’s Richard? He’d nodded. She’d accepted it but had she? Shortly after that she had been uneasy speaking to him. And when he’d confronted Richard Eames with the photograph in the exclusive Castle Hill Yacht Club in Cowes in August, Richard had neither confirmed nor denied it was him but had let him assume it. Gordon was dead. He died in 1973. But Jennifer had seen a ghost.
‘Andy, are you OK?’
With half his mind still on the past, he said, ‘Perhaps Mrs Freedman really did think it was her husband because she was told it was him and a life on the streets changes you and your appearance. Or perhaps Mrs Freedman lied because she was only too glad to have her husband formerly declared dead.’ And Richard Eames, and those he worked for in British Intelligence, were more than keen to believe Gordon Eames was dead. Not without some difficulty, he forced his mind back on the case. ‘We’ve had no confirmation from dental records that Freedman was Freedman but the dental records could match those of Robin Gamblin. The real Peter Freedman could be dead. Maybe Robin Gamblin killed him and took his identity. Perhaps he died on the streets, Gamblin helped himself to Freedman’s belongings and when he was picked up by the police it was Freedman’s ID he had on him so he became Freedman. That article you read about Peter Freedman in the local paper – were there photographs of him in it?’
‘Yes. You think Evelyn Lyster could have read it and got in touch with him, knowing it was Robin Gamblin?’
‘And someone else did. His killer. What else did that article say?’
Cantelli reached for his phone and quickly, calling up the Internet, found the article that had appeared in the local newspaper. ‘It’s dated the second of February last year. There’s a lot of stuff about living on the streets, how his last term in prison transformed his life and how he is putting something back into the community by volunteering at Gravity.’
‘Does it say when he volunteers there?’
‘Yes. Tuesdays.’
‘So Evelyn would have known where and when to find him. Why would she, though? To apologize for Cary’s death? To tell him Dennis was dead? Or did Gamblin aka Freedman know exactly where Dennis and Evelyn were? Perhaps that’s the real reason he returned to Portsmouth. He killed Dennis Lyster because he blamed Lyster for the death of his son and then he killed Evelyn Lyster after making certain she fell for him. Maybe she recognized him, maybe she didn’t. But he managed to elicit from her details of her and her husband’s illegal dealings and where her money was. And he believed that money should be his for sacrificing his son and for all the pain, torment and despair he’d suffered. Only he didn’t expect to be killed by a woman who had become infatuated with him and who wanted her husband dead.’ Horton paused. Then added, ‘But that’s not right because of the clothes.’ That was critical to this case. And he had an idea why, especially if he put it with the location. The lifeboat station. Now he saw what must have happened. With conviction, he said, ‘Freedman didn’t go to the lifeboat station to meet either Constance or Vivian Clements. He went there dressed as a vagrant to convince his killer that he was still on the streets, that he had nothing and that he was still in the depths of despair. It was someone he couldn’t refuse to see but who would ruin everything that he had planned. Someone who would become a millstone around his neck. Someone who had tracked him down or read that same article you did, Barney, and recognized him.’
‘And whoever it is got in touch with him to tell him where to meet.’
‘Yes, but how? Another tramp wouldn’t use a mobile phone and if the killer called Freedman’s mobile then Freedman had no need to go to the meeting dressed as a tramp because the killer would know he wasn’t a vagrant. Freedman’s phone number is public knowledge. It’s on his website. But Freedman’s killer knew where to get in touch with him – at Gravity. The killer got a message to Freedman when he was there and asked to meet him that night, Tuesday. Freedman assumed the killer thought he used Gravity because he was on the streets.’
‘Glyn Ashmead took the call and passed the message on.’
‘He says he was at a conference all day and didn’t get back until late. We haven’t checked if he really was at that conference. And he can’t account for his movements that night but I can’t see what connection he has with the Robin Gamblin of the past.’ Horton paused, contemplating this and frowning.
‘Gamblin might have been responsible for ruining him. Maybe Ashmead was a successful businessman and Gamblin advised him to invest his money in a fraudulent scheme. Ashmead lost everything and was declared bankrupt, and that led to him going on the streets.’
‘If that’s the case then it has nothing to do with Cary Gamblin’s death or the Lysters.’ Horton knew nothing of Ashmead’s background. ‘But that lifeboat station was chosen as the meeting point for a reason and not just for its privacy. It meant something to the killer.’
‘Ashmead could have owned a boat or a marine-related business that went tits up because of Gamblin.’
Horton considered this. Then sprang up. ‘OK, so let’s go and ask him.’