Pauline Rowson - A Killing Coast

‘Five foot ten.’

About the height of their body.

‘Inspector, is it Dad?’ she asked, anxiously scrutinizing him.

Cantelli shifted beside him, sensing what he was about to say. There was no easy way to do this.

Gently he said, ‘The description fits your father, and we found this.’

At a nod from Horton, Cantelli reached under the folder on the desk and pushed across the photograph of the key fob. Hannah Yately let out a cry and then gulped noisily before beginning to sob. Cantelli slipped out and moments later returned with a plastic cup of water which he handed to Damien.

‘Drink this, Hannah,’ her boyfriend urged quietly, ashen-faced.

Horton said nothing until she had drunk and composed herself. ‘I understand this must be very upsetting for you, Miss Yately, and although that was found on the body it doesn’t necessarily mean it is your father. But I’m not going to get your hopes up because it seems probable that it is him. If so, we need to find out what happened after you spoke to him on Wednesday. Do you think you could answer a few more questions for us?’

After a moment she nodded.

‘Could you confirm that belongs to your father?’

‘Yes. I bought it for Dad for Christmas about six years ago. He always carries it with him.’

‘Does he keep his keys on it?’

‘Yes. Weren’t they with it?’ she said, surprised.

They weren’t but Horton wasn’t going to mention that yet. ‘Does your father have any distinguishing marks, tattoos, scars?’

She shook her head.

Cantelli said, ‘Has he had any surgery?’

She swallowed hard and tried to pull herself together. Horton admired her for that. ‘He broke his leg five years ago. He was knocked off his bike when working. He was a postman; he took early retirement three years ago. And he had surgery on his knee, cartilage problems, about ten years ago.’

‘So your father doesn’t work at all?’ enquired Cantelli.

‘No. He says he doesn’t need much to live on especially since him and Mum got divorced.’

So that ruled out him wearing his wife’s clothes, thought Horton, unless he secretly had a hankering for her and had taken some with him when they broke up, which was a bit weird but then he’d met some pretty weird people in this job.

Horton said, ‘When did they get divorced?’

‘They spilt up when Dad took retirement. The divorce came through about eighteen months after.’

‘How did he take it?’

‘He was relieved. My mum’s not the easiest person in the world to live with,’ she answered with an edge of defiance.

‘And where is that?’

‘Newport, on the Isle of Wight. My parents were married for twenty-three years, but when Dad retired from the post office Mum said it was bad enough suffering him at weekends and in the evenings, she couldn’t stand being cooped up with him every day and night. I’d already left home and moved here to live with my boyfriend.’ She looked as though she was going to cry again but Damien squeezed her shoulder and that seemed to give her the strength to continue. ‘I work as a receptionist at the Ferry Port Hotel and Damien’s assistant manager. Mum said she’d supported me through college and now she wanted a chance of real life, as she called it, and a bit of fun before she was too old. She seems to be having it too.’

Horton noted the bitterness in Hannah Yately’s tone.

‘I don’t have much contact with my mother. Dad got over Mum throwing him out long ago. In fact, I think it was a relief. They hadn’t much in common and Dad would never have left her, he’s the faithful type. Till death do us part and all that. .’ She stalled, as she realized what she’d said, but instead of the tears came anger. ‘ If it is him then he must have had an accident. Why else would he have been in the sea? Does my mother know?’

‘We haven’t spoken to her.’ Horton added, ‘Did your father own a boat, Miss Yately?’

Her surprised expression gave him the answer before she confirmed this with a shake of her dark curls.

‘Did he know anyone with a boat, or ever go out sailing or fishing?’

‘He never mentioned it. You think he might have fallen overboard?’

‘It’s a possibility.’ Though Horton thought a remote one recalling how Yately had been dressed, unless he had been at a party on a boat, as Cantelli had posed. He said, ‘We’ll need to confirm identity.’

Her head came up, panic and alarm in her eyes. ‘You mean you want me to-’

‘No,’ Horton quickly reassured her. ‘We should be able to verify it is your father from fingerprints and DNA. Do you have a key to his flat? We need to check it out,’ he added, hoping that neither she nor Damien King would ask why they didn’t use the keys on the fob. Neither did. As she again reached down into her handbag, Horton wondered if they’d be able to check Colin Yately’s flat tonight.

‘Does your father own or rent the flat?’ he asked.

‘He rents it.’

So unless they could get hold of the landlord it would mean the local police making a forcible entry. Could it wait until tomorrow morning, by which time the keys could be sent over? A twelve hour delay probably wouldn’t make any difference, he told himself, and yet there was a chance that Yately could be lying ill or dead inside the flat, that he was not the body in the mortuary.

Cantelli took the two keys she handed to him. ‘One’s to the front door, the other’s to Dad’s flat,’ she said.

‘We’ll give you a receipt for it.’ Cantelli asked if she knew the name of the landlord. She did, but not his address. She thought it was somewhere in Shanklin.

Horton said, ‘What did your father do with his time?’ She looked a little bewildered so Horton elaborated. ‘He was retired so did he have any hobbies, interests?’ But he might just as well have asked her how far the planet Mars was judging by her expression. Hannah Yately had the self-obsession of youth and he guessed her doting father had been there on those dining-out occasions solely to listen to her and not the other way round. Still, he and Cantelli would do the same with their children when they reached Hannah’s age, and before that. Horton would give anything to spend a day listening to his daughter’s bright chatter.

‘He liked walking,’ Hannah Yately said hesitatingly, as if unsure whether that constituted a hobby.

‘Was there any particular place he liked walking, or did he have a favourite walk?’

‘I don’t know. He just walked.’ She eyed him with an air of desperation.

‘With anyone or alone?’

‘Alone. I think. I don’t know. He didn’t have any girlfriends if that’s what you mean, although he did seem happy. In fact, happier than I’d seen him in some time,’ she added, somewhat surprised that she had managed to recall this. ‘I asked him if he’d found himself a new woman; he laughed and said, better than that.’

‘What did he mean?’ asked Horton, interested in this new nugget of information and thinking of that dress.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she answered forlornly.

Cantelli said, ‘What about male friends? Was there anyone he was particularly close to or that he talked about?’

She shook her head. ‘Dad was very private. The so-called friends he did have were Mum’s and they disappeared quickly after they split up. I don’t know about his neighbours.’

Horton didn’t need a psychologist to tell him that Hannah Yately took her father’s side in the divorce. He again thought of his own daughter and hoped that he’d still be close to her when she was Hannah’s age, despite Catherine’s determination to keep him at a distance.

There didn’t seem anything more Hannah Yately could tell them for the present. Cantelli got her father’s date of birth and address, and the address of her mother in Newport on the Island. He asked if she wanted them to call her mother.