Pauline Rowson - Death Lies Beneath

‘Sorry, sir, don’t have them,’ came the unsatisfactory answer. Horton didn’t waste time enquiring why.

‘OK, tell them I’m on my way.’

He ran an electric razor over his chin and was on his Harley heading there within ten minutes, mentally preparing himself for what he might see and hoping that it was a long-ago fatality rather than a recent one. He headed west and then north and soon was turning off the main road and travelling through the narrow streets of terraced houses, which reminded him of Daryl Woodley because this was where he had lived and where Reggie Thomas and the rest of Woodley’s associates still did. Again he considered what was nagging at the back of his mind about the Woodley investigation. It hadn’t surfaced during sleep. As he turned off by the allotments and rode under the motorway bridge onto the small peninsula that butted out on to the upper reaches of Portsmouth harbour, he again tried to conjure up the elusive thought but it refused to come. No matter. It might occur to him later.

He pulled into the boatyard and parked beside the police car. PC Kate Somerfield broke off her conversation with a suntanned, muscular man in his late forties standing beside a van, and headed towards him. There was a frown of concern on her fair face and he thought she looked paler than usual, which didn’t bode well.

‘The body’s on the wreckage, sir,’ she greeted him sombrely.

Body, not bones then, so a recent death. That certainly wasn’t the news he had wanted. His eyes travelled across the yard to the far side of the quay, where a blackened rotting wooden hulk rested. It was still attached to the large yellow crane perched on a floating barge. Clearly the wreck wasn’t the Second World War munitions barge. It looked as though it had been a small yacht. PC Seaton was standing beside it. Two men were some distance to the right of him, one reading a newspaper and the other doing something on his mobile device.

Several thoughts rapidly ran through Horton’s mind as he made towards it. How long had this wreck been submerged? How long had the body been on it? How did it get there? Were they looking at suicide or an accident? Or was it an unlawful killing? He sincerely hoped it wasn’t the latter, the first two were bad enough but the third would stretch their resources even further and wouldn’t be good for the victim’s relatives either, he thought caustically.

Walking beside him, Somerfield continued with her report. ‘The crane operative, Bill Shoreham, that’s him reading the newspaper, spotted the body as he was setting the wreck down onto the quay. The other man on his mobile phone is Ethan Crombie. He’s the boatman.’

‘I hope he’s not calling the press.’

‘Seaton told them they weren’t to.’

But Horton knew people didn’t always do as they were told.

Somerfield added, ‘Mr Crombie, and another man, piloted the floating crane around from the Camber yesterday on tugs. Mr Crombie returned in one of the small tugs this morning at five thirty and moored up just behind the crane barge.’

Horton could see the black and orange tug boat.

‘The crane operative drove here from where he lives in Fareham. That’s his blue saloon car parked beyond ours. He arrived at about the same time as Mr Crombie,’ Somerfield continued. ‘And Kevin Manley, the man I was talking to when you arrived, sir, who’s in charge of the salvage operation, got here with his team at first light at about five a.m. Mr Manley called us.’

Horton glanced back to see Manley’s crew of three sitting on the ground beside the van. Their diving suits were peeled back to their waists and they were watching the proceedings with interest. Not so Manley, who was pacing the ground impatiently with a frown of irritation.

By now they had reached the hulk. Horton tensed in preparation for what he was about to see.

‘She’s lying face down, sir, sort of wedged into the corner of the wreck. Seaton and I haven’t touched her and neither have the others, or so they claim. It doesn’t look as if she’s been dead very long.’

A woman, then. He steeled himself and leaned forward to study where Somerfield indicated but no amount of preparation could have primed him for the sight that greeted his eyes. With a shock he swiftly took in the figure-hugging black dress; the suntanned bare legs, the black high-heeled shoe on one foot, and the wide-brimmed black hat that was, remarkably, still lodged on the dark hair by a tangle of seaweed. Too late he knew what had been bugging him last night and he was angry he hadn’t seen the significance of her appearance at the crematorium sooner instead of being sidetracked by thoughts of Sholby and Hobbs and their flash new cars. But even if he had sat up all night wracking his brains he might not have thought of her and even if he had he couldn’t have done anything to prevent her murder, because although he was no doctor it didn’t need a medic to see the bloody wound in her back.

Sawyer had been right, someone had shown for Woodley’s funeral, only no one had expected a woman, and no one had paid any attention to her because he’d assumed, probably like Uckfield, that she was there for the funeral following Woodley’s. She still might have been, he rapidly thought, reaching for his phone, but that didn’t explain why she was here, dead. But if she was connected with Woodley then had she been sent to his funeral by Marty Stapleton? Why though, unless Marty really wanted to check that Woodley was dead and cremated, and even then she had arrived too late.

Uckfield cursed vehemently and loudly on receiving the news before emphatically declaring, ‘She can’t be Woodley’s killer.’

‘She might not have been his attacker but she could have picked him up outside the hospital and left him for dead at the marshes.’ On Marty’s instructions? he wondered. Only she didn’t look the type, but then what the hell did he know about her anyway?

Uckfield rang off after saying he’d be there within forty minutes. Horton called Trueman and quickly relayed what had happened, instructing him to notify the police doctor and mobilize the circus.

‘Is Walters in yet?’

‘He was in the canteen when I was there a few minutes ago.’

‘Tell him to skip breakfast. I know it will break his heart but I want him to check around the county for any reports of missing persons.’

He hadn’t seen a ring on the third finger of her left hand, but that didn’t mean anything. Someone might have expected her back last night.

He said, ‘Ask Walters to get the details of the funeral following Woodley’s and we’ll need photographs of the victim from Clarke’s video for circulating to all units.’ He hadn’t needed to tell Trueman that but he said it anyway.

Uniform arrived within minutes and began to set up the outer cordon just beyond the motorway flyover and the inner cordon at the entrance to the boatyard. Horton instructed Seaton and Somerfield to take initial statements from the crane driver, boatman and Manley and his crew. While he waited for Dr Price and the scene of crime officers to arrive, he surveyed the boatyard.

Its isolated position made it an ideal place to leave a body or to commit homicide. Except for the small sailing club next door there were no neighbours. The sea surrounded it on three sides. The fourth was the only road to it. This was the end of the line, which it certainly had been for their lady in black, and if she had driven here then where was her car? And why come here? It was several miles away from the crematorium, but not he had already noted from where most of Woodley’s associates lived.

There were no gates at the entrance to the yard and Somerfield had told him no security patrols. But there must have been people in the sailing club last night; the weather had been too good for there not to have been. And if so then someone might have seen something. He recalled seeing a CCTV camera at the front of the small timber-clad building as he’d driven past it before pulling into the boatyard. There was also one over the dinghy park; perhaps they had recorded the victim’s car arriving, and the killer’s. He crossed to one of the PCs on the inner cordon and asked him to get the contact details of the sailing-club secretary and commodore. As Horton headed back to the body, Manley pigeonholed him. Somerfield threw Horton an apologetic glance.