Pauline Rowson - Death Lies Beneath

‘Yes.’ She seemed taken aback by his abruptness. Quickly recovering she said, ‘The mourners at Amelia Willard’s funeral you asked me to check. There was only one man who said he didn’t see the woman with the large black hat because he had to go to the toilet.’

Horton’s pulse quickened. ‘And he is?’

‘Lawrence Sanderling. Flat 1, King Charles Court, North End. Is it important?’

‘Oh, it’s important all right.’ Horton reached for his sailing jacket. He’d changed into a set of clothes he kept in his office: cargoes and a T-shirt, socks and shoes. He’d learnt over the years that they’d be needed on many occasions and not only because someone had thrown up over what he had been wearing but that they might end up covered in blood. This time it was because his other clothes were soaked through.

‘Let’s talk to Mr Sanderling.’

‘But what about the interview with Kenneth Loman?’ Eames asked, surprised.

‘Uckfield can get someone else to take Loman’s statement.’

Uckfield was reporting to Dean, who was at home. So too was Bliss because there was no sign of her at the station. But then it was nearly ten thirty.

‘You can always go home, Eames,’ Horton added, heading through the CID office.

‘No,’ she said quickly, plucking her jacket from the coat stand and following him.

He remained silent as Eames drove through the glistening wet streets to the north of the city. His thoughts took him back to Patricia Harlow. The initial prognosis was that she would recover but that she’d be permanently scarred and there was the possibility of brain damage. A car had been sent to take Connor Harlow to hospital. Soon he’d discover the extent of his birth mother’s and his adoptive mother’s crimes. He wasn’t sure how Connor was going to handle that but he knew there would be pain and bitterness. Ross Skelton’s two daughters, aged twenty-three and twenty-one, might feel the same along with shock when they discovered their father had murdered a man and was a crook. His estranged wife might gloat over it, though, or was that his view of how Catherine would react? DI Dennings had reported that he and the Border Agency had found six illegal immigrant workers in Coastline’s operations at the festival and now they and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs would be trawling through Skelton’s business operations like a prospector looking for the smallest glint of a diamond that could change his fortunes.

A message on Horton’s desk and another on his voicemail from Sergeant Elkins had said that Ballard had left St Peter Port, they weren’t sure when. He must have slipped out. No one had seen him go.

Eames pulled up outside a shabby block of flats not far from the leisure centre in the north of the city, and close to where Woodley had lived. It also wasn’t far from the old boatyard. Eames pressed her well-manicured finger on the dirty intercom, while Horton noted the peeling and scuffed paintwork, the rubbish lying around in the forecourt and the rotten windows. She hadn’t asked why they were here and he could see that she had been rapidly trying to work it out. Perhaps she had by now.

A man’s wary and wavering voice answered. Eames quickly introduced them and added, ‘We are quite happy to wait here, Mr Sanderling, while you call the police station to verify who we are and to push our identity cards through your letter box or put them up against your window.’

‘No. Come in.’

The buzzer sounded and they stepped inside. Horton registered the dirty hallway, scratched paintwork and the smell of urine and rubbish.

A door to their right was opened by a grey-haired, well-built man in his late seventies dressed in a petrol-blue cardigan over a check shirt and grey trousers. Horton made to show his ID when the elderly man forestalled him. ‘I know who you are and why you’re here.’

They followed Lawrence Sanderling through the tiny vestibule into a small living room with old-fashioned furniture and a threadbare carpet. Seeing and interpreting his glance, Sanderling said, ‘Not much for a man who once used to run a company, live in a large house not far from Edgar and Amelia near the seafront, own a boat, privately educate his daughters, and was married to a lovely woman.’

‘Sharon Piper and Leo Garvard,’ said Horton sadly.

‘Yes.’ Sanderling waved Horton into an ancient chair with a sagging cushion in front of the electric fire. Sanderling drew up a hard-back chair and gestured Eames into it, before pulling up one for himself.

‘It was my own fault,’ Sanderling said, once settled. ‘I was stupid enough to believe them and greedy enough to fall for their lies, but I wasn’t the only one and I thought if it was good enough for Edgar then it was good enough for me. Sharon was his niece, for God’s sake.’

‘You saw her when you came out of the toilet at the crematorium.’ Because this was the man Horton had stepped aside for when he, Uckfield and Marsden had followed Woodley’s mourners to the front of the crematorium.

Sanderling nodded sadly before a spark of life and anger flashed in his grey eyes. ‘There she was dressed to the nines looking well and wealthy. Living off my money and other fools like me, laughing and tucking her hand under the arm of a man. I nodded at her and she blanked me. She didn’t even remember who she had once fleeced.’

‘Even if she had I don’t think she would have cared.’

‘No.’

‘You should have come to us.’

Sanderling lifted a shoulder. His body seemed to be curling up in itself. ‘I couldn’t stomach going into Amelia’s funeral after seeing her. I decided to follow them.’ He glanced up at Horton. ‘I had no idea why or what I was going to do. I was on some kind of autopilot and very, very angry, not a showy sort of violence but something deep inside me had snapped. It was eating away at me, driving me on. She got in a car parked in the overflow car park where I’d left mine. I always park there when I go to funerals at the crematorium, and there seem to be a lot of them at my age, it’s easier to slip away. He got into a big silver four-by-four, Toyota Land Cruiser. I didn’t know then where he went but I followed her to Gregory and Patricia Harlow’s house, where she sat in the car. When the funeral car arrived she climbed out and crossed to them. There was a brief exchange between them and then Sharon got back in her car and drove to Horsea Marina. I saw her get on this boat with the man she’d met at the funeral.’

Horton had been correct about that. Skelton’s motor boat had been impounded. On it was a RIB that Skelton used as a tender and Horton had been told that, like Foxbury’s, it had a powerful Suzuki 300hp engine on it, or rather twin engines, powerful enough to whip him across the Solent in fifteen minutes. Horton was betting that Skelton had returned to the mainland from the Island then used his RIB to cross back to the Solent, he’d moored up in Wootton Creek or at Fishbourne and walked to Firestone Copse, where he’d arranged to meet Harlow. There he’d killed him, walked back to the RIB and returned to the marina or moored up outside it and returned to the marina the next day or Saturday. All this they would painstakingly check.

Sanderling was saying, ‘I had no idea how long she intended to stay on the boat with this man. It might be all night. I wanted just one glimpse of recognition from her, or one sign of remorse.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I certainly wasn’t going to get that. The longer I sat there the more I thought back over my life, remembering how it had once been. I thought too of Edgar and Amelia and poor Rawly and the anger grew. It was a cold, calm sort of rage, as though everything had suddenly became very clear. I knew what I had to do.’