Twenty-five

The marina was silent. The fog clung to the boats turning them into ghostly hulks. As Horton punched in the security code and walked the length of the pontoon to his boat, he knew it wasn't the weather that was making him shiver but a coldness inside him. He drew up sharply. The hatch to his boat was open and he certainly hadn't left it that way. He stiffened, then his heart sank. If it was Detective Chief Superintendent Sawyer of the Intelligence Directorate after that brooch, the Portsmouth Blue, the information of which he could have picked up via prison intelligence, Horton would tell him to piss off. He certainly wasn't going to tell him a single thing. But, as he descended into the cabin, the man who was waiting for him was the man who had left the photograph. Andrew Ducale. He should have guessed Ducale would show up now.

'Your timing is perfect,' Horton said sourly, studying the fit-looking man in his mid-sixties who held his gaze steadily with steely grey eyes.

'There are some things we need to discuss.'

Horton remembered the well-modulated authoritative voice from when they had first met last June. Was that really less than a year ago? It felt like an age. From the moment they had met, Horton had known that Ducale was a man who could command, and people would follow without question. He bore little resemblance in looks to his twin sister, Horton's foster mother, Eileen, save there was a determination about the set of the chin.

He took a breath and nodded, forcing himself to relax. After all, there was still a great deal he didn't know, and questions had run through his troubled mind on the ferry home. Opening the fridge, he said, 'Drink?'

Horton extracted a bottle of water and, only after taking a long drink from it, did he take the seat opposite the silver-haired, muscular man sitting behind the galley table. 'Jennifer worked for you.'

'Yes, that is she worked for MI5. I was her liaison officer. My sister, Eileen, also worked for MI5.'

Horton felt only a small surprise because he had begun to suspect it. Eileen had left no photographs of herself save a couple of just her and Bernard at their wedding. She had never spoken of her past and no relatives or friends had come to her funeral, only neighbours and those associated with her in her final years. She had worked for the civil service in the naval dockyard when he had lived with her and Bernard, and before then had worked in the tax office in Belfast during the Troubles as a secretary, but that was just a cover for her real role of gathering and passing on intelligence.

Ducale was saying, 'Eileen recruited Jennifer when they were both working in the typing pool for the Ministry of Defence in London.'

Dormand had been right then when he'd told Horton that Jennifer had worked for the intelligence services. 'Eileen never once mentioned that she had known my mother,' Horton said with bitterness. 'Why not?' he demanded, feeling a stab of betrayal against his foster mother for not confiding in him. All those years and someone close to him could have revealed more about his mother.

'Because of the Eames' family,' he said scornfully.

'Because she was bound by the Official Secrets Act.'

'She could at least have said she knew her.'

'And you would have asked questions which she couldn't answer, because some she didn't have the answers to, and others she was unable to. Eileen recognized that Jennifer was highly intelligent and that she was frustrated her intelligence wasn't being utilized. She also craved excitement and action. She was patriotic and she wasn't afraid of danger, although she grew more cautious after you were born.'

'Eileen knew who my father was?'

'No. But I did. It wasn't until I returned to the UK from the Far East in 1982 though that I discovered Jennifer was missing and that you had been taken into care. No one looked out for you or protected you because William Eames saw to it that your existence was kept a secret. Likewise, her disappearance was only briefly investigated. It was hushed up because of her background, and you weren't given any special treatment because that would have been questioned and that was the last thing William Eames wanted. William knew where she was, but she didn't pose any danger to him then because she knew nothing about his secret affiliations and betrayals. Everything was dealt with quietly and effectively. But I managed to get permission to take you from social services and hand you over to my sister and her husband to raise. They were more than happy to do so, and it wasn't guilt Eileen felt because she had recruited Jennifer. She genuinely cared for Jennifer, and for you. She couldn't have children of her own. She was with Jennifer when you were born, and she helped your mother while they were both living in London.'

'And you expect me to believe that Jennifer never confided to Eileen who my father was?' Horton said incredulously.

'Yes. Because they were both working for the same organisation. They knew the rules and even if they decided to abandon them, which neither did, Eileen didn't know what work Jennifer was assigned to and vice versa. When you were five, Jennifer was moved to Portsmouth. Eileen was sent to Belfast where she worked in the tax office while assisting in gathering intelligence on both the Irish Republican Army and the National Unionist Party. It's where she met Bernard, who, as you know, was an RAF police officer and was shot by the IRA while patrolling the airfield at RAF Aldergrove. He was wounded in the shoulder and taken to the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar, Gosport in 1978, but Eileen didn't return to live in Portsmouth until some months later. She thought Jennifer had left Portsmouth of her own free will until I told her what had happened.'

'I saw you give Bernard a tin containing what you had of Jennifer's. You were the man on the motorbike who was talking to Bernard when I came home early from school that day.'

'Yes. As you know there wasn't much in it. Just some pictures of Jennifer and your birth certificate, which were given over to social services and filed on the request of MI5. I got them released and the authority to hand them to Bernard after you'd been living with him and Eileen for a while.'

All of which had been burnt when a villain had torched Horton's previous small boat. But the Portsmouth Blue had been missing from that tin because PC Adrian Stanley had already taken it.

'I knew you'd be safe with Bernard and Eileen, and you were. You also had no desire to probe into your mother's background until fifteen months ago when your interest was sparked by a case you were working on. You discovered that Jennifer had met up with a diamond thief while working in the casino, and it was him that it was believed she had run away with, abandoning you.'

'And Detective Chief Superintendent Sawyer was sent to probe how much I knew about the Portsmouth Blue.'

'He didn't know about that, or about Jennifer being employed by MI5. He was investigating the thefts of diamonds masterminded by an international crook codenamed Zeus who, as it turned out, was not the diamond smuggler Jennifer had met at the casino as you know. After that investigation you accessed the missing persons report on her. There was an alert on anything connected with Jennifer Horton and I was informed. Richard Eames was also notified. He, as you rightly suspected, works for MI5. Then last April you called on the police officer who was sent to investigate her disappearance, PC Adrian Stanley.'

'How did you know that?' When Ducale didn't answer, Horton swiftly continued, 'You had me under surveillance. I didn't notice.'

'I'd have been disappointed if you had.'

'And my phone at work? Is that tapped?'

'No, and neither is your mobile.'

Horton wasn't so sure about that. He said, 'You called on Stanley after my visit.'

'Yes, but too late. Richard had got there before me, not that he told me that. Stanley was unconscious.'

'And Richard's visit to Stanley, immediately after mine, caused him enough distress to trigger that stroke.'

'It appears so. Richard had to leave quickly. He didn't have time to search the flat or retrieve that photograph, which Stanley must have put away after he noticed you looking at it. Richard tried again when Stanley was in the hospital. And he succeeded. He found the brooch in Stanley's flat and he sent an operative to the hospital to retrieve any photographs Stanley's son might have taken there for his father, and into the son's house to see if there were any further pictures to remove.'

Horton withdrew the much thumbed black and white photograph and placed it on the table. 'Why did you give this to me?'

'It's a long answer, but I'll do my best to explain. As you've discovered, Richard Eames works for MI5. He has access to a great many people in high places and picks up lots of intelligence. Unlike his father, Richard does not have extreme right wing leanings but he does have an acute sense of family, and was keen to make sure his father's murky past was never discovered. He had no knowledge of it at the time he was recruited along with me when we were at Cambridge, although he came to learn of it after the series of deaths of the Radical Six and his brother's disappearance. I recommended my sister, Eileen, and, as I said, she in turn recruited Jennifer. Jennifer got a job as a typist at the London School of Economics, where it was known there was an active communist cell but not who was behind it. Her job was to infiltrate that cell and feed information to me. She discovered that one of the most active members wasn't a student but a young man who was the leader of the group, who lived in a squat in London, Gordon Eames. She obviously had no idea exactly who he was at that stage, or his background. I passed that information on, which in turn ended up with Viscount William Eames who was much higher up the chain than I was. William asked to meet Jennifer. He needed to know more about his son's involvement, a son he was already estranged from. Jennifer and William met, and they began an affair.'

Horton took a swig of water.

'William Eames was charming. She was flattered. He told her to get all the information she could on the Radical Six at the London School of Economics, which included Michael Paignton. Gordon was on the outside because he wasn't a student there, but it should have been the radical seven, or not because Rory Mortimer was a plant, a fact Jennifer had no knowledge of. That was William's insurance. Mortimer, who had the same political leanings as William, was in fact working for William Eames' secret fascist organisation. He was also gathering information. A belt and braces job except that Mortimer was not MI5. That picture was taken by Michael Paignton, as you probably worked out.' Horton had. 'But Jennifer's camera was used to take it.'

'There were others on the film?' Horton asked.

'Yes. Taken after and before that one. There were pictures of them preparing for the demos and at the demos, some of them violent. There were two photographs in particular of the group, including Gordon Eames meeting with George Belton, a known double agent, who was later imprisoned but managed to break out of jail, obviously with some help. From whom, it was never known, or at least it wasn't made known, but that's another story and doesn't concern you or Jennifer. Unexpectedly, Jennifer fell in love with Gordon Eames and he with her. But how could she tell him she was betraying him to MI5 and his father at that? She was bound by the Official Secrets Act. Then she discovered she was pregnant not by Gordon but by his father.'

'How could she be so sure of that?' It had been one of the questions that had been burning in his brain on the ferry home. He had taken the Eames' brothers word that he was the late Viscount's son.

'Because Gordon Eames was infertile, and he'd told her that. He'd had mumps badly as a teenager and, when an eighteen year old girl claimed he was the father of her child, it was medically determined to be impossible.'

Horton took another swig of water as though to rid the Eames family from his mouth. He thought of the gun shot he'd heard and the two men on that boat. Which of them was dead? Did he hope they both were? Did that make him as bad as them? He didn't like the fact that his mother had been sleeping with father and son at the same time. But who the hell was he to judge? He had wanted her to be perfect, but he knew she wasn't. No one was.

'William Eames told her that he could never openly admit to being the father or to their affair. It would compromise his cover. She was bound by the Official Secrets Act and the media would love it, if they ever found out. It was also the last thing Jennifer wanted exposed. She would lose Gordon. William said he would arrange for a private abortion. As you know abortion was legalized in 1967.'

And even if it hadn't been, Horton knew that William Eames would have found a medic to do it.

'It was a tough call for Jennifer. No one except William and I knew she was pregnant. She thought that if she went through with the abortion, she could be free to go with Gordon and put everything behind her. But while Jennifer had been gathering information on Gordon and the Radical Six, Gordon had been making his own enquiries and digging deep into his father's past. In fact, he'd started building information on his father, whom he hated long before 1967. He'd spoken to people who had known his father, former employees who had been sacked or suffered an accident, and to their relatives, and began to see just how deep his father's treachery and betrayal went. He was disgusted by it and cared nothing for the family name. He faced his father with it.'

'As he told me. You know that I've just come from them, on Richard's boat on the island?'

Ducale nodded. 'Gordon told his father he would go public. Foolish, but he was young and believed in his cause. William asked Mortimer if Gordon had spoken about his past. Mortimer said he had and that he'd told all of them in the Radical Six.'

'No. Mortimer was protecting his own back. He didn't want his fascist leanings paraded in public, or to be associated with William Eames if it all came out, and Mortimer knew how determined and committed Gordon was. Mortimer knew that if he said they all knew the secret they would be dealt with.'

No wonder Mortimer was hated. Horton took a deep breath. 'Gordon was meant to die in that fire. William was prepared to kill his son.'

'Yes, with Mortimer's help. William had no time or love for Gordon. William was a self-centred, arrogant, opinionated man with a sociopathic nature that made him believe he was right on every occasion and superior to others. And Gordon was a communist whom William despised as much as the gypsies and Jews.'

Horton was appalled that some of the blood that had run through that man also ran through him. His gut twisted at the thought of it, his body ached with tension. He tried to tell himself that he was also his mother's son, that he must have inherited some of her genes, all of them he sincerely hoped. He said, 'Mortimer drugged Zachary Benham. The rest Gordon has told me.' His head throbbed with the knowledge of what he had learned.

'Jennifer was told that both Gordon and Zachary had died in the fire, which was what was believed. Despite William's wishes, Jennifer went ahead with the pregnancy, which showed how strong willed she was.'

Horton knew that must have been a tough call because illegitimacy was a stigma back then. Unmarried mothers were ostracised. It was a totally different world now. And it was tougher for her to have the baby than to get rid of it.

Ducale continued as though reading Horton's mind, 'She told William she would keep the baby. He explained what that would mean, that she would have no claim on him and that he could no longer act as her boss or her lover. She was relieved. She didn't love him, and she couldn't see how she could end the affair. She was glad he had done that for her. The organisation took care of her.'

'And my sister, as much as we could. Remember we were junior members of the organisation then. And I was posted around Britain and then abroad. Jennifer stayed in London with Eileen for a few years after you were born, then she moved to Portsmouth and recruited to work for us again, but obviously not with William.'

'Dormand was right then when he said she had provided intelligence on the IRA?'

'Yes. Jennifer was moved into a larger flat on a higher floor in Jenson House and got a job as a croupier in the casino where she was able to gather lots of intelligence. It was a well-known meeting place for those sympathetic to the IRA.'

'Then one day in November 1978, Gordon Eames walked in to the casino, a man she thought was dead.'

And Gordon had told him the rest. But had he? 'Gordon told me he'd returned for his mother's funeral and to reveal the truth behind his family but got cold feet. He was going to get Jennifer out of the country and said he knew nothing about my existence. Was that true?'

'I doubt it very much. I think William took great pleasure in telling his son exactly what Jennifer had done and whose child you were because, according to our records, Gordon flew back to Australia two days after meeting Jennifer.'

'He didn't take a cargo ship then,' Horton said quietly.

'No. He did what he's always been good at. He ducked out. Richard also knew the truth.'

'More lies and cover ups. Gordon also said that William gave Jennifer the Portsmouth Blue brooch.'

'He did, and he thought she would have it on her when she came to meet Gordon, but she didn't because she didn't know that was the day Gordon had planned for them to leave.'

As Gordon had told Horton. That much was true at least. Horton said, 'She fully expected she could go back to the flat for her belongings?'

'Yes. William met her on his boat. He told her he was taking it out and that they would pick up Gordon on the way, either at Gosport or possibly, he said, the Isle of Wight. It was only after killing her that he realized the brooch wasn't on her. It was too late to go back.'

Horton took a breath. He'd already heard how William Eames had no scruples over killing, even his own son, Gordon, so why not his former lover?

'He ditched her body in the sea and then returned to his house on the island. He couldn't go to your flat and search it. And when William Eames managed to get someone into your flat and remove anything incriminating – you must have been at school – PC Adrian Stanley had already been ahead of them and helped himself. William assumed Gordon had met with Jennifer after he had seen her and before she had met him on his boat and taken the Portsmouth Blue.'

Horton ran a hand through his hair and assimilated this. His mind sped back to the awful days longing for his mother to come home, to rescue him from hell until finally he gave up and decided to hate her instead. The Eames family had done that to him, but he tried to hold on to the thought that hating them would achieve nothing. They would never know and, even if Richard and Gordon were still alive, his hatred would mean nothing to them. He would be the only person hurting from it. The hatred would curl up inside him and gnaw away at him, germinating bitterness and resentment, and possibly fuelling revenge and even murder. He'd put his hatred of Jennifer aside some time after Bernard and Eileen had shown him how to.

With exasperation he said, 'You haven't answered my question on why you planted the photograph. Why not tell me all this straight out instead of this cloak and dagger stuff and leaving me to discover who those men were and the significance of the photograph?'

'Would you have believed a word of it if I'd simply told you?'

'Yes. No. I don't know.'

'You're a police officer. You're trained not to trust easily, to disbelieve and to question, and you're also a good detective. When I discovered Jennifer had disappeared, I asked questions but, as you can imagine, I was rapidly discouraged from doing so. I was told that handing you over to my sister was all the concession that would be made, and I was posted abroad. Eileen, of course, was also sworn to secrecy. William was still one of the top people in the organisation then. He had enormous influence. But the powers that be had already begun to suspect him of having extreme right-wing leanings, which were getting worse. He was becoming more paranoid and obsessed, especially during the Labour administrations. He was a liability. Mortimer had already seen this and, after framing Michael Paignton for the murder of Roger Salcombe, which he committed, the last deed he did for William, he cleared out in 1970, receiving a generous payment from William. He changed his name, acquired a new passport through his dubious contacts because he wouldn't have trusted William to give him one – that would have enabled William to have him tracked and taken out whenever he wanted. Mortimer went abroad. In his new guise he became exceedingly wealthy, perhaps some of that wealth gained illegally, some legitimately. He was always a shrewd investor, brought up to appreciate fine wine and art, and he invested well, as you discovered. He was also incredibly adept at extracting secrets from people.'

'Yes. You remember Tom Brundell?'

Horton could hardly forget the charred remains of that man whom he and Cantelli had found on the boat in Horsea Marina the December before last. It had been the incident which had kickstarted his curiosity into Jennifer's past with the vicar's press cuttings about him.

Ducale said, 'Brundell, a former fisherman, became a wealthy investor. He returned to his home town of Portsmouth from Guernsey, when he discovered he was dying of cancer, to confess to a crime he and his fellow fishermen had committed years ago, as you investigated, that they had killed a man. In Guernsey he had met Cedric Halliwell, who extracted that secret from him. Halliwell got a great deal of money from Brundell, and he also got the story about Jennifer Horton, a name he recognized from the past. He learned from Brundell that Jennifer had worked in the Portsmouth casino in 1978 and that she had a son, called Andrew, who was a police officer.'

'Did Mortimer know who my father was?'

'And he bought Beachwood House on the Isle of Wight knowing that Richard Eames owned a property there. Mortimer thought it might be useful living so close to him. So it wasn't Paignton's idea, as Gordon told me.'

'Maybe it was a bit of both. But Mortimer was happy to go along with it because he knew, when he revealed to Richard what he'd discovered about his father and how you were William's son, he'd be in clover. And that maybe he should tell you.'

'Is Antony Dormand alive?'

'His body hasn't been found but we're certain he's dead.'

There was a small silence. Horton caught the faint sound of a halyard against the mast which meant the wind was rising. With it the fog would lift.

Ducale broke the silence. 'You know what happened to William Eames?'

'I read in the newspaper that he had an accident on his yacht in 1979 while sailing off the coast of France.'

'Officially, yes. When Jennifer disappeared, her background was checked. Had someone discovered she was passing on intelligence? Were the IRA involved? Nothing came back on that. There was a risk with her being loose. Could she be coerced into giving away intelligence? Had she defected or was it simply a case of running off with another man, which was the version that was circulated?'

'And which I believed until the Tom Brundell murder on the boat in Horsea Marina.'

'Her past file was examined and eventually it led to the Radical Six. The deaths of Timothy Wilson and James Royston were probed. Then there was Michael Paignton's prison sentence, the death of Zachary Benham as everyone believed in that fire, and the disappearance of Gordon Eames. And, as I said, the powers that be were getting worried about William's increasingly extreme opinions. Slowly Williams Eames and Rory Mortimer's secrets were unearthed. Mortimer had vanished. William was confronted. He knew that no one would reveal the truth, there was too much at stake for that, but equally he knew that one day he'd have a mysterious accident. He took off on his yacht, which was found abandoned just south of the Portsmouth to Cherbourg ferry route on a heading for Barfleur, France. The file was closed. It came into my possession when I took over as head of the section ten years ago, but it wasn't until the alert sounded on your enquiry to social services in January and after that your access to the missing person's file on Jennifer, that I was notified. I retrieved the file.'

'Did Richard also know this?'

'Yes. But he knew nothing about the photograph. Not until you showed it to him, which must have worried him. The photograph I left on your boat was the only one that I had in my possession. The others, Jennifer had given direct to William who had destroyed them. I'm not sure why Jennifer gave me that picture, or why I kept it, maybe some sixth sense you develop, just as police officers do about a situation or a person. I put it away with my personal papers in a safe deposit box. If you hadn't started asking questions, that is where it would have stayed. I instigated a search for Mortimer without Richard knowing. He had to be kept out of it. I had my suspicions about him. I found the trigger for your enquiries had come after Brundell's death and we linked that with a man called Halliwell who had been an associate of Brundell's in Guernsey, as I mentioned, and who had bought a house on the Isle of Wight. Halliwell also had a secretary, who we were certain was Michael Paignton.'

'So you had them watched and followed and discovered that Paignton was friendly with Ben, a wood carver. And that Jethro Dinx, a talented artist, was Gordon Eames.'

'Then Dormand was discovered to be at Northwood Abbey. Richard Eames could have recognized him. He was, after all, a generous benefactor and visited the abbey regularly. Or he was told. Not by me but someone else in the organisation. But I don't think he was.'

Horton relayed his theory of how Richard had come across Paignton.

'It sounds highly likely,' Ducale concurred. 'It was only as I looked more deeply into the situation that I realized how much Richard knew about his father's past and how deeply he must have been involved in those deaths, even possibly in covering up Jennifer's disappearance.'

Horton took up the tale. 'But what Dormand didn't know, until Gordon told him, was the lies he'd been told by William Eames and Rory Mortimer – that Royston and Wilson were spies. They weren't. They died along with all those men in the Goldsmith Psychiatric Hospital because William was afraid that his secret of being a fascist and a traitor during the war would be exposed.'

'Yes. Whichever way, and whoever got Mortimer first, Dormand or Paignton, or even Richard, that would be the end to it, and you would never know the truth. I thought you deserved a chance at it if you wanted it. You could have thrown away that photograph. You could have consigned it to a safe deposit box. It was down to you.'

'How far was Professor Thurstan Madeley involved?' Horton recalled the man in his late-fifties who he'd met in the Castle Hill Yacht Club on the Isle of Wight in August and who had compiled the archive file on the London School of Economics 1960s protests.

'Madeley was tasked by Richard under the guise of instructions from MI5 to make sure that there was no reference to the Radical Six in the London School of Economics archives and no photographs, also to ensure that the Eames family didn't feature anywhere in the files. A mission he achieved long before you visited and delved into the university's archives. He was surprised when you showed him the photograph. He wondered who had given it to you and the only person he came up with was Amos. He gave you his name, possibly to see what you would do, or because he felt it better to give you something than nothing, which might make you even more curious and suspicious. Besides, he believed that Amos's memory would probably be failing by then.'

'And Madeley told Richard Eames after I had left him at the yacht club what he'd done. Amos knew his days too might be numbered after I went to see him. He told me who five of the men were, but not the sixth, Gordon.'

'He probably didn't know him. Gordon wasn't a student there.'

'After I'd gone, Amos thought he'd leave a message for me with his solicitor, but it was just a set of numbers on the back of an envelope. By accident, while I was visiting Haslar Marina Gosport, in August, I discovered that, with a bit of manipulation, the numbers could be the marina's grid location. It hadn't been a marina in 1978 but it was in close proximity to MI5's communications and training centre and the hospital where Bernard had been a patient after being shot in Northern Ireland, so I thought Jennifer could have gone to meet someone there and been abducted.'

'You were on the right lines but the wrong location.'

Horton could see that now. If he took the numbers Amos had given him, 01.07.05 and 5.11.09 as degrees, minutes and seconds and made the five 50, then the numbers he got were 50deg 11min 9sec North, one deg. 7min 5sec West and in degrees this became 50.18583 deg. North and 1.11805 deg. West. Horton could pinpoint it on a map, but he didn't need to because he was convinced he knew what he would find; the place mentioned in that article he'd read in Walter's newspaper and which Ducale had told him was where William's yacht had been found abandoned. 'They're coordinates just south of the Portsmouth to Cherbourg ferry en route to Barfleur, France.'

'Where he disposed of my mother?'

'I should imagine so.'

Horton drank from the water bottle. 'How would Amos know this?'

'You told him?' Ducale remained silent. Horton said, 'Did William Eames kill himself or was he killed?'

Again, Ducale shrugged.

'And releasing Ben's fingerprints from the intelligence files after his body had been discovered was down to you?'

'Yes. I thought that it might force Richard or Gordon's hand. Or both, which it did.'

'How did you know that Lomas or rather Gordon had given me that card?'

'Mike Danby is not the only one who has security and surveillance monitors at Richard's properties.'

'Which of them is dead? I heard a gun being fired.'

'Perhaps they both are. Whichever one of them is piloting the boat has disabled the automatic tracking system, but we'll pick it up somewhere. Whether there will be anyone on board…'

Horton exhaled and ran a hand over his face. He felt incredibly tired.

After a moment, Ducale said, 'Does knowing what happened make a difference?'

'I don't know,' Horton replied with weary exasperation.

'It doesn't change the person you are. And it doesn't change the person your mother was.'

'Yes, and you can't bring her murderer to justice. He's dead.'

'He should have been charged, tried and convicted.'

'You think that would have happened? There was no evidence and no witnesses.'

'Both Gordon and Richard knew their father had killed Jennifer. They should have come forward.'

'Seeing as Gordon was supposed to be dead, he didn't. It would have stirred up so much dirt that the authorities would have sat on it.'

'One law for the rich and one for the poor,' sneered Horton.

'There is no one to try for the murder of Rory Mortimer. And no one to bring to justice for the deaths of Timothy Wilson and James Royston, or of Roger Salcombe, all of whom were killed by Mortimer, not Dormand, and he too is dead. It's up to you to decide if you want anyone to know about your parents.'

And Horton knew that Ducale already had the answer to that. Even if Richard Eames was still alive, Horton would never be able to bring him to justice. And anything he said would mean exposing his mother's past. He shuddered at the horror of that. And Emma? What would she think of it? Would Catherine use it to somehow prevent him ever seeing Emma again?

'What will Gordon do now, if he's still alive? Will you pick him up off that boat?'

'I shouldn't think so. Gordon will do the same as he's always done. Disappear. He no longer has any responsibility for Zachary Benham or Michael Paignton.'

'But if Gordon is dead and Richard is still alive, he won't disappear. And I'll be around to remind him of his family's dirty secret. What's to stop him having me killed?'

Horton understood. Ducale didn't need to spell it out. And perhaps Richard had already taken the same way out as his father. 'He'll always be there reminding me of how he left me to rot in those children's homes.'

'Then don't let him. You can't change the past, Andy.'

'Christ, don't I know that.'

'And Jennifer? What would she want?'

'Don't try that emotional crap on me.' Horton rounded on him, but the anger subsided as Ducale gave him a steady look.

'You discovered the truth, Andy, and it was never going to be a fairy tale ending. You of all people should know that rarely happens. The baddies don't always get banged up, the evil bastards live on to a ripe old age and get away with it, the good die young. There are no neat pink ribbons to tie up at the end. Life is often messy and shit and, at other times, it's OK. Getting revenge is not the way you're made, even if you think it is. You'll have a job finding Gordon or getting anything on Richard. And you'll never get a warrant to get that vault opened and the body of the man found on the Australian beach exhumed and examined.'

'Don't the man's relatives deserve something?'

'And the brooch, the Portsmouth Blue?'

'Oliver Vernon will be persuaded into thinking you were enquiring because it was stolen in the Trehams robbery.'

'Do the Eames family have it?'

'Why? Do you want it? William gave it to Jennifer.'

'I want nothing from them.'

Ducale rose. He stretched out his hand. Horton took the firm grip in his. He had a great deal to be thankful to this man for.

He watched Ducale leave. He knew he wouldn't sleep that night, even though he was tired beyond belief. His head was too full of the revelations of the last few hours. The mist was lifting, there was a light wind blowing, and it wouldn't be long before the sun rose to reveal a bright April day. He made the boat ready and set a course for France. There was one final journey he had to make.