Pauline Rowson - A Killing Coast

He tensed and edged forward. The fog soaked up the meagre light his small torch emitted, but he could make out a few items that told him he was in what had once been the kitchen. Moving into a passageway he was relieved to find sturdy flagstones underneath him instead of gaping rotten floorboards. To his left was what remained of a staircase torn apart by ivy and weeds. The smell was worse here and a cold sweat gripped him as his heart raced with the inevitability of what he would ultimately find. Crossing the hall he stepped inside another room. The darkness was too deep to penetrate, however the stench told him what was there, but not who. The breath caught in his throat. One thing for certain, it wasn’t Sarah Walpen. She’d be bones by now.

Beneath him now were floorboards and a glance down warned that a step forward could result in injury. And it would take a long time for anyone to find him, if they ever did. He didn’t want to end up like Arthur Lisle, because he was convinced that was who he would find in the next room. And he wasn’t about to verify that, not now, not alone, and not in the dark and the fog. It was definitely time to leave. He turned to go.

It was all wrong, though. If Hazleton had agreed to meet Lisle here and had then killed him, how did he end up in the boot of Lisle’s car? Simple, Hazleton hadn’t killed Lisle, but had stumbled on someone doing just that and so had to be killed himself. And who the blazes could that be? Was it the same person who had killed Yately? It had to be. And that person had put that dress on Yately’s body, hoping that it would be identified. But that was a very long shot, and the killer hadn’t done it as revenge for Sarah’s death, because why kill Yately when he had nothing to do with it? Sarah didn’t have any relatives, and if she’d had a lover, he’d be a very old man by now, much older than Hazleton, and incapable of carrying out three killings. So why had Yately’s killer wanted the body in that dress? And why had Yately’s killer wanted him silenced and the trail covered up with the further killings of Lisle and Hazleton?

The house creaked and groaned as the fog reached inside. It felt as though the place was giving itself up to the dead. Time to leave . He could reason all this out in the safety of Hazleton’s driveway or on the ferry back to Portsmouth, not here. He stepped forward. The floor creaked behind him. Spinning round, he could see nothing and no one. He turned and his foot caught on something. Experience and instinct told him what it was. Surely he couldn’t have been so disorientated as to have stumbled into the room and found Arthur Lisle. But no, there was the rotting staircase to his right. He’d gone further into the passageway instead of the kitchen. His breathing laboured as he played the thin beam of his torch on the floor. Steadily, with his heart pounding, he took in the bloody mess of the head, the sightless staring eyes. But there was no mistaking who it was. With a shock he saw that it was Russell Glenn. Shit! He’d killed himself.

That was Horton’s first thought; his second was anger that the chance of interrogating Glenn to find out if he’d had a connection with Jennifer had been snatched from him. His third was disappointment, followed by the realization that Glenn hadn’t killed himself. For a start there was no gun and Glenn had been shot in the head. And from what he could see, Glenn hadn’t been dead for very long. Horton hadn’t heard a shot but the fog could have muffled the sound, and neither had he heard any vehicle approaching. He stiffened. He had seen a boat though before the fog had come in. A RIB. Russell Glenn’s RIB. He must have been coming here to meet his killer. And who the hell could that be? More to the point, was the killer still here?

Horton spun round, sensing rather than hearing someone behind him, but he was too late. The blow struck him across the back of his head, and as his legs buckled beneath him and his face hit the dirt and dust of the rotten floorboards Dr Clayton’s words flashed before him: a single blow to the back of the head is rarely enough to kill someone unless the victim is unfortunate enough to have a thin skull, but several blows can . The last thing Horton wondered as the darkness swallowed him up was what type of skull he had.

The thick type was the answer, thankfully, because a short time later, maybe only minutes, Horton opened his eyes to find his head pounding and his mouth full of dust. Gingerly, he rose, trying to focus his vision in the dark, wondering why the killer hadn’t finished him off, but immensely grateful that he hadn’t.

He staggered up, swaying a little. His head was hurting but he was alive, and that was the main thing, not like Glenn beside him. Horton couldn’t immediately see his torch and he wasn’t going to waste time searching for it. He only hoped he could find his way out of the house without it and not stumble over Lisle’s body deeper in the dark interior.

His eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom and within a couple of minutes he found himself staggering through the kitchen and, with relief, outside into the damp clinging fog. Hastily, he followed the path to the front of the house. He recalled there was a turn and then it was straight ahead to the low cliff top. Clearly, Glenn had come on the RIB into the bay either alone or with his killer. If he’d come unknowingly with his killer, then the RIB would be the murderer’s means of escape. And if Glenn had come alone for his rendezvous, then either there was another boat down in the bay or the killer had already been on the Island. Horton knew that no one could have got close enough to the house by road, but it was always a possibility that the killer had a car parked further away.

But no, Horton heard the spluttering of a boat engine and hurried in its direction towards the bay. The killer was a fool to try and get away in the fog. He could be dashed to pieces on the rocks, and Horton very much wanted this killer alive. His mind was racing with thoughts at Glenn’s unexpected death. Who could have wanted him dead and why? How was it connected with Sarah Walpen — because it had to be, why else would Russell Glenn have come to her house? Had Glenn killed Colin Yately, Arthur Lisle and Victor Hazleton to prevent a secret from being exposed?

Horton recalled the expression on Glenn’s face when he’d come on deck and stared at him on Monday evening. He thought he’d witnessed recognition and thought it had been directed at him, but perhaps it hadn’t been. Perhaps there had been someone nearby or behind Horton who had caught Glenn’s attention. And Horton swiftly recalled what Cantelli had told him: Glenn had joined the Merchant Navy in 1968, working on cargo ships and tankers, joining Carnival Cruises in 1978 until 1981. Then he’d re-emerged in the UK in 1985 with enough money to buy up a chain of hotels. Where had that money come from? Not from a merchant seaman’s pay.

Horton put the strands together as he rushed towards the shore. Was it possible that Glenn had met Sarah Walpen, killed her and stolen from her? And he’d come here because someone had threatened to expose his secret, a secret that Colin Yately and Arthur Lisle had discovered from their research and been killed because of it. Glenn could have killed them, and he could also have killed Victor Hazleton because Victor Hazleton could identify him, but who had killed Glenn? Clearly someone else who knew the secret, and that person could have been who Glenn had seen behind Horton on the boardwalk.

The sound of the engine trying to start again ripped through the air, slicing into Horton’s thoughts. He had only minutes to reach the RIB before the murderer disappeared into the fog. Sprinting towards where he hoped the cliff was, his mind teemed with thoughts. Glenn would never have come here alone. Lloyd went everywhere with Glenn, so PC Johns had said, which meant that Lloyd must be the killer and Horton’s assailant. But if Glenn had come here alone then there was only one person it could be trying to start the boat’s engine.