Five

'This is the first I've heard about a cabin in the bay and about a man found dead in it,' Chilcott declared with some hostility as though Horton had deliberately placed both there to annoy him. Behind square-framed glasses, his hazel eyes blinked hard. His podgy fingers, sporting a couple of gold rings, one with what looked like a diamond in it, fiddled with his pink tie.

Horton didn't take to the rotund solicitor, but then maybe he was biased towards to them because of Catherine's who seemed determined to make his life as difficult as possible by blocking his request for greater access to his daughter. Though, to be fair, they were only working under her instructions. His own solicitor, Frances Greywell, was a million miles away from this pompous individual with a round pink face and a thin film of sweat on his forehead and upper lip. Ms Greywell was efficient and professional and doing the best she could but for all that, she seemed to be up against a brick wall.

They had been shown into the boardroom at the rear of the building. Marsden had retrieved his notebook and pen from the inside of his jacket pocket and looked expectantly at Chilcott. Horton thought Chilcott's surprise genuine. He obviously hadn't heard the news on the local radio or seen it on the internet.

'We thought the cabin might be part of the late Mr Halliwell's estate,' Horton said.

'Not according to the Land Registry,' Chilcott crisply replied. The boundary of the deceased estate goes to the top of the cliff which leads down into the bay.' Chilcott pulled at his right ear which Horton noticed was larger than his left.

'How long had Mr Halliwell lived there?'

'He purchased the property fifteen months ago, January.'

So bang went Horton's earlier idea of the property having been in the family for years and neglected as the owner grew sick or old. Horton was almost certain the cabin was older than that. 'Would the cabin have required planning permission?'

'Probably.' Chilcott ran a chubby forefinger down the side of his right cheek and again blinked hard. 'And it wouldn't have been granted given that there are no utilities laid on in the bay, no water, sewage, gas etc. and no access to it either. It's also a highly volatile area. Landslips.'

Horton nodded and Marsden scribbled. Chilcott shifted and was about to speak, but Horton said, 'How did Mr Halliwell die?'

'I really don't see that this has anything to do with that vagrant.'

'Probably hasn't, but humour us, Mr Chilcott.'

The solicitor looked taken aback for a moment. 'If you must know, it was a heart attack on board his boat, a motor cruiser.'

'In the Solent. Ryde Inshore Rescue found him. They'd received a call from the Captain of the Wightlink Catamaran about a drifting boat. They went on board and found Mr Halliwell dead.'

'Where did he keep his boat?' Halliwell couldn't have kept it permanently moored in the bay, and a motor cruiser was definitely not the wooden boat he'd seen in front of Ben's cabin.

Horton had put in there many times. It was on the north of the island. By the sounds of it, Cedric Halliwell wasn't as much of a recluse as Sergeant Norris had said. 'Was he under the doctor for any underlying medical condition?'

'No. In fact, he wasn't registered with a doctor. I really don't see the reason for all these questions, Inspector.'

'Is Beachwood House the only property he owned?'

'Yes.' Chilcott looked at his watch.

Horton ignored the hint. 'Did Mr Halliwell own a car?'

'No. He didn't own any form of transport, except the boat.'

Maybe he didn't have a driver's licence, thought Horton, or had surrendered it, being elderly. But then Horton didn't know exactly how old Halliwell had been when he died. He asked.

'His passport states he was sixty-four.'

Horton had envisaged someone in their eighties, so he'd been wrong on that count too.

Chilcott was saying, 'I'd have put him a few years older than sixty-four, but we can't all look younger than our years.' He smirked as though expecting some comment or compliment. Neither Horton nor Marsden responded. Horton would have said Chilcott was mid-forties but maybe he was being kind.

'Who is the next of kin?' he asked.

'There isn't one. Mr Halliwell named me as his executor and told me that he was single and had no children or living relatives.'

So that ruled out Ben being a relation. Perhaps there wasn't a connection between the two men. Yet someone had used that footpath, and someone had killed the landslip corpse. He was curious to know who Halliwell's benefactors were but first, he asked, 'How substantial is the estate?'

Chilcott blinked twice, as though he didn't understand the question. He bristled and fingered the knot of his tie. 'I can't see that it is any business of yours.'

Calmly Horton said, 'It is when we are trying to establish the identity of a man who lived and died in the bay beneath Mr Halliwell's estate and that of a body found on the cliff just below his grounds.'

'Body? What body? You mean there have been two deaths?' Chilcott was genuinely shocked and puzzled.

'Yes. We're treating the second death, the one found on the cliff, as suspicious.'

'I don't understand.'

'Neither do we at the moment, Mr Chilcott, which is why we are here and why we'd appreciate your cooperation. As both deaths occurred so close to the late Mr Halliwell's estate, we have to ask these questions.'

'You should have explained all this to begin with,' Chilcott snapped. 'I still don't see how it can be relevant to my late client, but Mr Halliwell's estate is worth approximately six million pounds, maybe more.'

'That much!' Marsden declared, stunned.

Chilcott's eyes swivelled to the young detective. 'The house, contents and grounds amount to approximately two million, and Mr Halliwell had bank accounts in Guernsey and Zurich and an offshore account in the Cayman Islands, so you can see that handling his estate is not a straightforward matter.'

Horton was growing ever more curious about the late Cedric Halliwell.

'How long had he been a client?'

Chilcott shifted, clearly uneasy. 'Since January.'

'Last January?' A year after he'd purchased Beachwood House?

'Yes. He asked me to draw up his will.'

Even more curious. Why would someone that wealthy entrust a substantial estate on his death to be dealt with by a small local solicitor? Horton would have thought an international law firm with expertise in handling the dismantling of complex financial accounts would have been more suited. OK, so Halliwell was dead, and perhaps he hadn't cared what would happen to his estate on his death. Maybe he had walked into the offices of the first legal firm he had come across on the island to make his will. Perhaps he had been in a hurry and he had intended to change solicitors when he had more time. But that didn't wash because he'd had a year since purchasing Beachwood House to make a will, so coming here on the spur of the moment seemed to be out of it, unless he had been told in January that his days were numbered. A month later he was dead.

'Do you know how he amassed his wealth?' asked Horton, also wondering why Halliwell hadn't spent some of that wealth on renovating Beachwood House, which was falling down around him. Maybe he hadn't had the time or had been miserly. Rich people often were.

'Of course not. And it wasn't my place to ask him.'

No, thought Horton, Chilcott wouldn't have wanted to probe and risk losing a valuable client. 'There was nothing in his paperwork to indicate his past occupation?'

Truth or lie? Horton wasn't quite sure, but he knew the solicitor was uneasy about something.

'Did he employ any staff? I understand there is a gatehouse to the property.'

'There is, but that has been empty for years.'

'Well, no.' Chilcott looked uncomfortable. 'It's shuttered, and Mr Halliwell told me it was empty.'

Horton thought it strange that the solicitor had taken his dead client at his word and hadn't been curious to see inside the gatehouse.

'As far as I am aware, there were no staff at any time, or if there were then Mr Halliwell didn't keep employment records. There was no contract labour to settle, no gardener, window cleaner, domestic cleaners. At least no one has come forward saying they are owed money, and there were no outstanding bills to be paid. There were no invoices either, the latter of which he must have destroyed.'

'He might have scanned the paperwork to his computer,' Marsden said. 'And paid his bills online.'

'Was there a computer?' asked Horton.

'Not in the house or on the boat, and neither was there a mobile telephone, laptop or any kind of device.'

'Don't you think that unusual?' Horton said.

Chilcott shrugged. 'Not everyone embraces technology. He might have been a technophobe.'

'So how did you liaise with him?' Marsden asked.

'He came into the office in person on 19 January and asked if I could have a will ready for him to sign by the 23rd. It was a bit of a rush, but it was fairly straightforward, so I agreed.'

And the fee Chilcott would have charged Halliwell would have reflected that. Halliwell must have indicated he was a wealthy man, or perhaps the fact that he owned Beachwood House had been enough for Chilcott to weigh up his client's worth and agree to the quick turnaround.

'The will was witnessed by myself and my secretary. Mr Halliwell gave me a set of keys to the house and the safe and told me I would find his papers there in the event of his death, those papers being fairly limited, as I've indicated. There was his passport and details of various bank accounts, and that's it. I didn't expect his death to occur quite so soon after making his will. Nine days in fact after he'd signed it. He was found dead on his boat on 1 February. Perhaps he knew he had a heart condition and had been told he hadn't long to live.' The small eyes blinked again three times, and the podgy finger again stroked the chubby cheek.

This was sounding decidedly strange to Horton. All right, so there were some eccentric people and maybe Halliwell was one of them, but the absence of employees, contract workers, and paperwork gave him the impression that Halliwell was keen to keep a low profile. Now why was that? His suspicious mind automatically leapt to the thought that Halliwell might have been in hiding because he was a crook, or because he was on the run from someone or something. He was probably wrong but the discovery of two bodies close to Halliwell's house set his police antennae vibrating like a pneumatic drill.

He said, 'There must be financial accounts. After all, Mr Halliwell would have been a taxpayer.'

'He wasn't. He hadn't been in the country long enough. He wasn't classed as a UK resident. His main residency was the Cayman Islands. He came back to the UK on 18 December and died on the 1 February, on his forty-fifth day here. He would have paid tax on his assets if he had been in the country for forty six days. But there you go. He has no residencies abroad, so I'm assuming he must have sold the place he owned in the Cayman Islands before deciding to return to the UK, perhaps because of that heart condition, and the proceeds of that are in his offshore account there. He was a British citizen, and the money from the sale of any of his overseas property and other assets will be released to me when probate is granted, but being subject to overseas laws, it will take time.'

And expense, thought Horton, knowing that Chilcott was the type who would spin it out and inflate his fee accordingly.

'He won't pay death duties either,' Chilcott continued. 'Because he was not 'domiciled' here. There is no Inheritance Tax on 'excluded assets' such as foreign currency accounts, overseas pensions and other investments.'

Horton took it that Chilcott was right about these tax technicalities. Even if he wasn't that would be down to him and the Inland Revenue.

'Do you have a photograph of Mr Halliwell?'

'Only his passport one, and you know how awful they are.'

'A pleasant man, well spoken, intelligent, about six feet tall, grey haired going thin at the temples, a heavily lined face, grey eyes, tanned, slender, well dressed. No jewellery,' Chilcott said the latter as though it was minus point. 'Now, if that's all, I have an evening meeting to attend.'

Horton rose, and Marsden quickly replaced his notebook and scrambled up. Horton noted the relief on the solicitor's face.

'Thank you for your help, Mr Chilcott. We may have to return if our enquiries make it necessary.' That drew a frown and a couple blinks. 'Oh, and we will need access to Beachwood House.'

Chilcott started with surprise, and his face flushed. 'But why?'

'We could execute a search warrant, but it would be much quicker if you, as executor, would let us have the keys.'

'I really can't see how it will help you. The man found dead on the cliffside has nothing to do with Mr Halliwell.'

'I didn't say it was a man.'

Chilcott's flush deepened.

'But it probably is,' Horton added. 'And Ben is most certainly male. Perhaps we could request permission from the benefactors, although that might be lengthy and time consuming. How many are there?'

'I don't know exactly.'

Horton looked puzzled. 'But surely you –'

'There is only one benefactor but several members so to speak. Mr Halliwell left his estate to a monastery, here on the north of the island. The Benedictine Monks at Northwood Abbey are the sole beneficiaries.'

That surprised and intrigued Horton. He thought it an unusual legacy. 'Did he say why he was leaving his estate to the monastery?'

'No, and it wasn't my business to ask,' came Chilcott's frosty reply.

Pity. 'Was he Catholic?'

'Not that I'm aware of.'

'Did Dom Daniel Briar know of this bequest before Mr Halliwell's death?'

'You know the abbot?' Chilcott asked.

'I've had dealings with the abbey.'

Chilcott sniffed as though he disapproved. 'The abbot was totally shocked by it.'

'Then Mr Halliwell wasn't a regular visitor to the abbey?'

'I really have no idea.'

Horton would ask Dom Daniel Briar, but it was getting late, just after five, and from his previous contact with the abbey, Horton knew that after five thirty, from Vespers onwards, the monks would be in prayer and discussion. He'd talk to the abbot tomorrow if Uckfield permitted it. This wasn't Horton's investigation. But the fact that he knew the abbot, that he could also liaise with Dr Clayton here on the island before and possibly after she conducted the post-mortem on the landslip course, and that DI Dennings was otherwise fully engaged on the Trehams robbery, meant he had a fair chance of being involved for another day at least.