Fifteen

Monday

Over the weekend Horton thought a great deal about Felice. He called her mobile but, disappointingly, got her voice mail. He left a message to thank her for her help and said that he hoped her father would make a quick recovery. He wondered how the accident had affected him and what ailed him. Horton hoped it wasn't anything serious, but the shadow that had crossed her dark attractive face told him it was.

  He spent some time on the internet looking up aboriginal paintings and the artist with the magical name, Munduwalawala of South East Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. He didn't learn much more about Munduwalawala, but he thought back to his enquiries with the Australian police in Nhulunbuy. The town had been relatively new in 1973, when Gordon Eames' body had been found and, although the area had been the traditional homeland of the Yolngu people for more than forty thousand years, it had expanded in the early 1970s after large bauxite deposits had been discovered on the Gove Peninsula in the 1950's. No one knew what Gordon had been doing there, or how he had arrived and ended up dead on the beach. It was suggested he had come in by boat, which he'd fallen from in a drugged stupor, and the boat had drifted and been lost at sea. There had been no post-mortem. Richard Eames had identified his brother, and the body had been privately flown to the UK to be laid in the family vault at their Wiltshire home.

  Horton hadn't found any record of a Coroner's Inquest. As far as he could ascertain he only had the Eames' family's word that Gordon Eames had died of a drug overdose, and he didn't trust that one iota. Without proof, Gordon could have died of anything. He might not have died at all. But if Horton challenged Eames, he would just stonewall him.

  Monday was a day of enquiries, reports and waiting. Uckfield came in late. Horton saw his car arrive from his office window and watched his squat figure gingerly haul itself out with a wince. He noted the absence of Uckfield's usual strident gait. He looked like a man twenty years older, bent and walking as though on glass. Horton felt concerned for him and, despite Uckfield's predictable short temper, Horton vowed to challenge him on his health.

  Bliss was already in her office and as yet hadn't bothered Horton. Long may it last, he thought, as Walters ambled in and began to tackle the piano removers, a mammoth task, he reminded Horton. 'They could be located in the Cayman Islands where Halliwell lived.'

  'Then try them first,' Horton re-joined. 'Then Guernsey where he had a bank account. Liaise with Inspector Guilbert.'

  Walters put another doughnut in his mouth and fixed his eyes on his computer screen.

  Cantelli put in a call to Simply Cellars and Horton, back in his office, read through the coroner's report on Halliwell, which had been emailed to him. As they had no medical records it was impossible to say whether there had been any existing health conditions that had led to his death. The pathologist had found some hardening of the arteries, some swelling of the brain, liver and kidneys, alcohol in the blood stream but not excessive, and no drugs. So that ruled out Elkins' view that Halliwell could have killed himself by a drug overdose. The conclusion was that Halliwell had suffered a coronary artery contraction, or severe spasm; in effect, a tightening of a coronary artery which, being alone on board his boat and unable to summon assistance, had led to a fatal heart attack. The spasm had cut off blood flow through the artery. It wasn't a common cause of a heart attack, but the pathologist had said that alcohol and the cold could have triggered the coronary spasm. The heating unit hadn't been on when the rescue crew had boarded the boat. The cause of death was determined as heart failure, as Chilcott had said. Horton checked the list of the items found on the dead man when he was taken to the mortuary and frowned.

  He rang Norris and asked him to check the items PC Wetherton had found on Halliwell's body. Aside from the wallet with no credit or debit cards and only a small sum of money, Halliwell had been wearing a Tag Heuer watch but no ring as described by Redcar. They only had Jason Arlett's opinion of the Ryde Inshore Rescue team that the watch had been a genuine Tag Heuer. It had been listed as being removed from the body by the mortuary attendant, but how did the mortician know whether it was genuine or a fake? And why hadn't Chilcott mentioned it? Why not donate it to the charity shop along with Halliwell's clothes? Because he had known it was the real thing.

  Horton called Gaye and was pleased when she answered.

  'I've reviewed the post-mortem report on Ben,' she said before he could speak. 'There's nothing wrong with it that I can see, everything was fairly straightforward. Dilated cardiomyopathy – when the heart can't pump enough blood because its main pumping chamber, the left ventricle, is enlarged and weakened.'

  As the mortician had informed Horton when he'd viewed the body. 'What causes it?'

  'Could have been genetic, or an auto-immune disease where the normal immune response doesn't work properly, is overactive, and attacks the body's healthy cells and organs. Could be a viral infection, such as viral myocarditis, which can cause dilated cardiomyopathy because the virus doesn't clear from the heart. Exposure to toxins such as excessive alcohol and some drugs used in chemotherapy treatment can cause it, but not in Ben's case as there was no sign of cancer, and besides, that cause is rare. Pregnancy can also cause it, but I think we can rule that one out.'

  Horton smiled. 'So nothing suspicious.'

  'It looks that way.'

  'But you're not sure?'

  'It wasn't a forensic autopsy, so there could be something that was understandably missed by the pathologist.'

  'I'd like to be certain,' Horton said, not that he had any idea of who would have killed Ben, save it being Lomas. 'I'll ask Uckfield if he'll authorize one.'

  Gaye said she could conduct it Tuesday if he could rush through the paperwork. 'I've also examined Ben's wood carving tools,' she added, 'and none of them fit the pattern of the wound on the landslip corpse. But the killer could have ditched that particular tool in the sea.'

  'Is a coronary artery spasm common? It's what Halliwell died of.'

  'Yes, I saw that in the report, which I've also reviewed. There doesn't seem to be anything untoward about his death either. You're more likely to have these spasms if you have conditions that can affect the heart, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. Other things that can put someone at risk of coronary artery spasms are smoking, excess use of stimulants, such as cocaine and amphetamines, extreme stress, extreme cold, and alcohol withdrawal, but there was no medical evidence to say he was a drug user or an alcoholic.'

  'He had an extensive and expensive cellar.'

  'Complete with wine?'

  'Yes.'

  'Which bears out he wasn't an alcoholic unless the bottles were empty.'

  'They weren't, at least not the ones I saw. I didn't go round checking them. But you're right. It seems as though they were bought as an investment. And not having Halliwell's medical records, we've no idea if he had high blood pressure or high cholesterol, or both.'

  'His heart was pretty healthy, actually.'

  'Could the spasm have been brought on deliberately by some other method?' he asked.

  'It's possible. He could have been poisoned or forced to take an overdose, but that would show up during the autopsy and blood tests.'

  'Not if there wasn't a full forensic autopsy.'

  'No, but the pathologist would have seen other outward signs on the body showing evidence of poisoning. Or it could have been shock induced. That wouldn't show up in an autopsy.'

  What kind of shock, wondered Horton? That Halliwell's criminal ways were about to be discovered or exposed if he had been a criminal?

  Gaye asked if there was any further news on the sailing club arson.

  'DC Leonard's on the trail of a night time lone canoeist who could have a penchant for Molotov cocktails and a good aim. A man with a grudge against sailors, or that sailing club, or particularly a grudge against Councillor Levy, the Chief Constable, or Venda Atkinson the latter of which you said earlier was highly unlikely.'

  'It could be a woman with a grudge. We make competent canoeists and are renowned for our aim.'

  'But arson is more a male thing.'

  'Agreed, but it's not impossible for a woman to have committed this crime. Hell hath no fury and all that.'

  'Jealous lover or wife?' She could be right. Both Levy and the chief were married, and perhaps one of them had been playing away and the lover, or wife, had taken drastic action. He rang Leonard and left a message on his phone, then he put the thoughts on hold while he went to fetch some sandwiches for them all.

  He met Sergeant Warren in the canteen who broke the welcome news to him that two of his officers had caught the highway robbers up to their old tricks early that morning. The woman and older of the two men were, it turned out, known to the police for theft but not of the road kind.

  'They usually go in for shoplifting and a spot of house burglary but thought they'd diversify. Anything more on the arson?'

  Horton said no, to which Warren replied, 'That won't please the chief but then not much does. How about your landslip corpse?'

  Horton briefly brought him up to speed as he paid for the sandwiches.

  'PC Jennings happens to be into wood carving. I'll ask him about the tools used. He might come up with some ideas.'

  Horton said he'd get Trueman to email over the photographs of the wound. He diverted to the incident suite. Trueman told him that the Land Registry had confirmed the boundary of Beachwood House went as far as the clifftop. Norris had earlier reported that the council could find no trace of any planning application for a log cabin. He had enquiries out for any builders or carpenters who had erected it, but Horton wasn't optimistic that anyone would come through on that. It might have been built by the previous owner. It didn't seem to matter much anyway. It had no bearing on the investigation. Ben had been in situ last May when he had approached the abbey, and Halliwell had known he had been living there. Horton crossed to Dennings who was scowling at the crime board on the Trehams robbery.

  'Any progress?'

  'Dead end,' grunted Dennings.

  On the board were photographs of the stolen items – an emerald and diamond pendant necklace; a diamond clip brooch and bracelet; an Art Deco jade ring; a delicate diamond and sapphire bracelet with a matching heart-shaped diamond sapphire ring, and a Breguet marine date watch, the latter with a value of twenty thousand pounds. Somewhat more expensive than Halliwell's Tag Heuer watch. And where was the ring that Redcar had seen? On the other Cedric Halliwell's hand, obviously, but why hadn't it been removed when he'd been killed? If he had been killed. After all Redcar's Halliwell could have been posing as him with the consent of the real Halliwell, who had died on board his boat.

  Horton ventured, 'I take it that all of those items are the genuine thing and have been authenticated?' Judging by Dennings' expression, his question wasn't welcome.

  'What do you take me for?' he snapped.

  Horton didn't like to comment.

  'The Trehams have valuation certifications and proof of purchase,' Dennings continued.

  'Except for two pieces,' Horton said. 'Those. They haven't got any value beside them.' He indicated the pictures on the crime board of a diamond and sapphire bracelet and a matching heart-shaped diamond sapphire ring.

  'That's because they're paste. Costume jewellery. Not real diamonds.'

  Into Horton's mind came the song his mother had sung shortly before her disappearance: Diamonds are a girl's best friend. Had she been alluding to the brooch he remembered her wearing, or had there been a ring? He couldn't recall the latter but then he had only been ten. The brooch, he'd been shocked to see again as recently as last April, in a photograph of the late wife of former PC Adrian Stanley who had been sent to investigate Jennifer's disappearance. Horton had visited Stanley to see if he could throw any further light on his mother's disappearance, even though he'd read Stanley's sketchy report demonstrating a luck-lustre investigation, barely questioning anyone who had worked with Jennifer and only one neighbour. Horton believed that Stanley had stolen it but before he could question him, shortly after his visit, the former PC had died of a massive stroke and the picture Horton had seen had vanished. Stanley's son had told him there was no brooch in his father's belongings and no pictures of Mrs Stanley wearing it. If it had been paste then why had all evidence of it vanished?

  He'd checked the national database of stolen art and antiques and the internet for any reference to the brooch – a blue diamond centrepiece with a pale pink stone beneath it and surrounding it, like petals, four clear diamonds – and had found none. He'd also asked a couple of jewellery experts he knew, again with nil result.

  Dennings was saying, 'The scumbag thieves will get a nasty shock when they discover those two items are of crap value.'

  'Why did the Trehams put them in the safe?'

  'Because they were of sentimental value. They'd been given to Mrs Treham by her aunt shortly before the aunt died five months ago. The trail's cold. This case is going nowhere, which seems to be the same with your landslip corpse.'

  Quite literally, thought Horton, knocking and entering Uckfield's office. He told a pale-skinned Uckfield that Dr Clayton could conduct a forensic post-mortem on Ben the following day if he authorized it. Horton expected Uckfield to refuse, or quibble about it, and had prepared himself for an argument, but Uckfield simply nodded and muttered something about sorting it out with Trueman.

  Horton did so, postponing his questions to the Super on his health, on account that Uckfield's phone rang as he was about to do so. He asked Trueman to ring through to Dr Clayton to confirm it, and returned to CID, his mind mulling over what Dennings had told him. Had Dennings checked with jewellery experts that those two items really were paste? They must be though, because they hadn't been insured.

  From the machine outside the office, he bought Walters and Cantelli tea and himself a black coffee. As he entered CID, Cantelli waved him over excitedly.

  'I've finally managed to speak to Derek Coppens at Simply Cellars. He gave me the same description of Cedric Halliwell as Redcar, including the scarring on the hand, which means whoever Chilcott and Nansen dealt with was a phoney.'

  'Not necessarily.'

  'Well Coppens is convinced the man he dealt with is Halliwell. He was shocked to hear of his death. The last time he spoke to him was on the telephone last June. He asked if he was happy with the cellar and satisfied that all the wine they held for him had been safely transported there. The telephone number Coppens had for Halliwell is the same one Redcar had. Halliwell said he was completely satisfied. The last time Coppens saw Halliwell was in February, when he commissioned the bespoke cellar.'

  'So who posed as Cedric Halliwell, took up residence in Beachwood House, made a will with Chilcott, and then ended up dead on the boat?' Horton handed out the sandwiches.

  Cantelli indicated his Tupperware box containing his homemade ones. Walters leaned across and took the packet that Cantelli would have had, saying, 'Will the real Cedric Halliwell please stand up? Or maybe he's already lying down in the mortuary.'

  'The landslip corpse?' Cantelli posed, tucking into a small square cheese and pickle sandwich. 'Could he be the man with the scarred hand, the Halliwell that both Coppens and Redcar dealt with?'

  'If he is then there's no scarring left on the bones to confirm it,' Horton replied while wrestling with a particularly tough piece of meat that the packet said was ham; it tasted more like sandpaper. Not that he'd ever eaten the latter, just that this meat was so rough and chewy that he thought decorators must have been in the factory while it was being made and someone had slapped in a slice of sandpaper instead of ham. He threw it aside, wishing he'd plumped for something simple like cheese.

  Cantelli sipped his tea and continued, 'Halliwell, the real one, stored his wine with Simply Cellars for fifteen years. He'd visit the warehouse once a year to inspect his wine. Not to drink it.'

  'Seems pointless to me,' muttered Walters. 'Like looking at a hamburger and saying you'll keep it for a rainy day.'

  'Hamburgers go off,' said Horton.

  'So does wine.'

  'Not this kind,' Cantelli said. 'I never knew there was so much to it. Storing wine is a serious business and a delicate operation, I've been told, but when you're handling thousands of pounds worth of property which could shatter in an instant and be wiped up with a dishcloth, you would have to be cautious. Give me bricks and mortar any day, and that's what Coppens' company has also done. They've invested in a state-of-the-art temperature controlled warehouse for storing the stuff, and charge their exclusive clientele for the privilege of keeping their wine there. According to Coppens there are only a handful of these especially equipped warehouses around the country. Theirs is just outside Guildford, which is why we don't know about it, because it's not on our patch. They look after about twenty five million pounds worth of their customers' wines, people who can't store it on their premises or who don't want to.'

  Walters gave a low whistle. 'Blimey, that makes robbing the off licence look puny.'

  'And Coppens says they have such tight security, including infra-red alarms and twenty-four hour surveillance, that the thieves would need stamina, strength and intellect to even get within spitting distance of the warehouse.'

  'Well, that rules out most of the scumbags on our patch,' Walters said and belched.

  Horton agreed. Robbery on that scale meant the big boys, or inside knowledge, or both. He was momentarily distracted by thoughts of the Trehams jewellery robbery – carefully planned, executed and timed. Big Boys or an inside job?

  'Coppens says all their staff are security vetted by a professional security company.'

  'Not Mike Danby's, by any chance?' Horton asked, drinking his coffee, thinking of that expensive wine in Lord Eames' Isle of Wight cellar which Danby's company handled the security for.

  'No. A company called Waterleighs based in London.' Cantelli referred to his notes. 'The serious wines, such as the Mouton 1961 and the Lafite 1945, are kept in special secure cages. Each case is bar tagged and labelled with unique identification numbers linked to the customer who owns it. Everything is on computer, which means we can check the wine which was stored by Coppens' company on behalf of Cedric Halliwell with those catalogued by Charles Nansen for probate purposes.'

  'Good. And Nansen must know that, so I can't see him helping himself to a few bottles.'

  'Maybe Chilcott will have thought the same,' but Cantelli sounded dubious. 'Coppens is emailing me the list. Though that doesn't mean if there is any wine missing it was pilfered by Chilcott. The real, or fraudulent Halliwell, might have drunk it after it was shipped to Beachwood House.'

  'True.'

  'Halliwell paid Simply Cellars from a Guernsey bank account, and the only address they had for him was care of that bank, Morgans. Coppens also said that it was because Halliwell travelled a lot, but he has no idea what he did for a living, if he worked. He knew nothing about Halliwell's personal circumstances or background. Said it wasn't their business.'

  'Would have been if Halliwell had failed to pay, which he obviously didn't. Any hint that the wine they stored for him came from dubious sources?'

  'None whatsoever, and you'd have thought I'd uttered a profanity when I suggested it. Coppens said they were instructed by Halliwell to liaise with the architect, Gary Redcar, over the building of the cellar. When it was finished, they moved all Halliwell's wine there. It wasn't simply a case of loading it onto a van either. The wine bottles had to be gently removed by hand and individually wrapped before being packed in hay-lined boxes to reduce the vibration during transport.'

  'They must have waited for a calm day on the ferry then,' Horton said slightly tongue-in-cheek. 'Wouldn't want all that valuable cargo rolling around.'

  Cantelli smiled. 'They then made sure the wine was safely installed and that the cellar was operating as it should before they left, and that was in May.'

  Walters swallowed the last mouthful of his sandwich as Bliss marched in.

  'On holiday are you?' she said scathingly, eyeing them.

  'Cantelli's just been reporting on what Simply Cellars have told him about Halliwell,' Horton replied.

  'And?'

  Horton quickly relayed the gist of it.

  'Write it up, Sergeant, and I'll tell Detective Superintendent Uckfield.'

  I bet you will, thought Horton. Bliss would take the credit for it.

  'Have you anything on piano removers yet, Walters?'

  'No, Ma'am.'

  'Then get on with it.'

  Horton's mobile rang. It was Jane from the fingerprint bureau. He answered as Bliss hovered.

  'We've got a match on the prints you lifted from Beachwood House and the boat,' Jane announced.

  'You mean aside from Nansen's, Arlett and his colleague?'

  'I don't have Mr Nansen's yet, but they are not Arlett's, and neither are they his colleague.'

  'Then whose are they?' he asked, sitting forward. Cantelli eyed him keenly. Bliss frowned while Walters sniffed and put his eyes on the computer screen.

  'They're the prints of a man called Michael Paignton.'

  'Who the blazes is he? And why have we got them on file?' Horton asked, stunned.

  'Because Paignton was convicted of the murder of Roger Salcombe in 1970.'