Pauline Rowson - Footsteps on the Shore

‘I didn’t know it existed until yesterday,’ Horton admitted, glad to turn away from the body and falling into step beside Cantelli, with a heavy heart, as they headed towards the house.

‘I’m amazed property developers haven’t been banging on their door, it’s just ripe for marina flats and houses,’ Cantelli said. ‘The Trotmans could have sold this land for a fortune.’

‘Perhaps they valued their privacy.’ And the price of that privacy might just have cost Venetia Trotman her life, thought Horton.

‘Did she have any relatives?’

‘I only spoke to her about the boat.’

‘And you call yourself a detective.’

Horton gave a brief smile, knowing that sometimes humour helped to handle the brutality of a situation. ‘If I’d known she was going to be murdered I’d have asked,’ he replied, thinking sometimes this job was shit. No, correction, most times it was. But the thought of getting the scum who had bashed her head in, and making a strong enough case against him that not even the CPS or a jury could drive a truck through, sustained him. Except for two things, he considered dejectedly: it wouldn’t be his case, and just as with Luke Felton, the bastard would either get a lenient sentence or be let out on licence to do it again. . and again. Could Luke Felton have done this? he wondered with a jolt. Not if he was the body in the harbour. And Horton could see no reason why Luke Felton would have been here. But then there was no reason why he had been on the Hayling Coastal Path either, not unless he had known Natalie Raymonds. Maybe he had known Venetia Trotman.

Horton gazed up at the house. There were two windows either side of the rear door and two above them with a small, narrow window squeezed in between on the first floor, above the door. The red brickwork was old, the house beautifully proportioned and maintained. He could sense what Cantelli was thinking; the next of kin could be in for a substantial inheritance, unless the place was mortgaged to the hilt. And perhaps that was the real reason Venetia Trotman had been selling her late husband’s boat — she needed the money to pay the mortgage and household bills, perhaps even her husband’s debts.

Stretching his fingers into latex gloves, he eyed the sturdy oak door. ‘No sign of a break-in.’ It would take some considerable effort to break into this. He tentatively tried the handle and the door opened to his touch, which wasn’t surprising if she’d rushed out to investigate intruders, though such a thing was brave and foolish.

They stepped inside a small utility room as it began to rain again. The space also clearly doubled as a cloakroom. But there was no sign of the red and blue sailing jacket, only a green waxed jacket and a Burberry raincoat, along with a pair of sturdy walking shoes and green wellington boots; Hunters, he noted. There was also a small empty hook beside the door, which looked as though its function was to hold keys.

Horton studied the rear of the door. Heavy bolts were fixed top and bottom and there was a strong lock on it, with the key still in it. He’d also noted the alarm, which had obviously been deactivated because there was no wailing noise as they entered. But had her killer disabled it? Or perhaps Venetia Trotman had never set it.

Yesterday she had met him at the side of the house and shown him straight down to the boat, waiting on the shore while he’d looked it over. She hadn’t asked him for any form of identification, and he hadn’t volunteered it. But then why should she ask when she had been expecting him? He’d answered an advertisement placed in the window of a newsagent’s shop in the nearby village of Portchester offering a boat for sale. Maybe her killer had done the same and, finding her alone and vulnerable, had returned to rob and kill her. That was a far more likely scenario than laying this at Luke Felton’s door. But who was the anonymous caller? He’d obviously found Horton’s card on the victim’s body.

Forensic would analyse the voice and try to pinpoint the accent, but discovering who it belonged to was about as likely as discovering a destitute banker. And Horton knew that even if they were able to trace where the call had been made, he doubted if it would tell them who had made it. He didn’t think it was her killer, because he would hardly have gone to the trouble to report the death. Horton hadn’t seen anyone while he was here yesterday and there had been no vehicles parked. A car could have been in the garage though.

He bent down to remove his shoes. Doing the same, Cantelli said, ‘No children’s coats or shoes and no men’s either. How long did you say her husband had been dead?’

‘She said three months.’

‘Time enough, I guess.’

For some, Horton thought, interpreting the meaning behind Cantelli’s solemn tone. The sergeant’s father had died of a heart attack shortly before Christmas, and Horton knew that for many, like Cantelli, no time would ever be enough.

He pushed open a door to his right and stepped into a spacious modern kitchen with gleaming white cabinets, a tan-coloured tiled floor, and a large modern range. Cantelli shivered. Horton placed his hand on the radiator. ‘Stone cold.’ It felt as though the house had been shut up for a long time.

‘There’s a central heating clock here,’ Cantelli said, peering at a device under a wall-mounted gas boiler. ‘It’s not set on a timer. Perhaps she switched the heating off on the first of March. Spring and all that, according to the Met Office,’ he added, opening cupboards. ‘Don’t think Charlotte would agree with that. Spring to her begins on the first of May at the earliest. She was very tidy, your Mrs Trotman. I don’t think a child has ever graced this house, leastways not like any of my five.’

Horton agreed. There were no kitchen implements on display, no letters propped up on the work surface and no pin board with reminders and important telephone numbers on it. He found the dishwasher empty. Ditto the washing machine. He sniffed. ‘Disinfectant and furniture polish. Someone’s done a thorough cleaning job.’

‘Not your average toerag burglar then,’ Cantelli replied, opening the fridge. ‘Perhaps Mrs Trotman was very house proud. She didn’t eat much. No milk, butter or eggs, just some cheese and a yoghurt. And there’s hardly anything in the food cupboards. Judging by this,’ he added, waving his arm around the clinically neat kitchen, ‘it looks as though she was obsessed with cleanliness.’

Perhaps she was, thought Horton, heading for the hall, which was also spotlessly clean. No muddy footprints on the pale blue carpet, or dirty fingerprints or worse smeared on the cream-painted walls. But why so little food? Maybe she’d intended going shopping that day.

Beyond the front door was a half-glazed porch. Horton looked for the red and blue sailing jacket hanging there but didn’t see it, which meant it had to be on the yacht or upstairs.

Cantelli took the room to the left while Horton entered the one on his right, clearly the sitting room. Everything seemed to be in place. The television set was the latest model and the russet-coloured leather furniture was modern and of good quality, placed on an immaculately kept parquet floor with a large tiger-skin rug underneath an ancient low coffee table devoid of magazines and containing only an empty earthenware bowl. The Adam style fireplace boasted a wood-burning stove of the instant gas variety, and a gilt-edged mirror above it, but that was the only item on the pale-painted walls apart from some uplighters. There were no bookshelves, no photographs, no letters and no dust.

Heavy red curtains draped the ancient windows, which gave on to a front garden and a tall hedge, with evergreen trees hiding the house from the narrow lane beyond. It didn’t look to Horton as though anyone had ever sat in the room, let alone lived in it, and for a moment he found himself wondering how it might have looked when first built and furnished by the original occupant, who might have been attached to the castle close by. Although no connoisseur of period design, staring around him he couldn’t help feeling as though the heart had been ripped out of this house.