Pauline Rowson - Footsteps on the Shore

Bailey’s grey skin flushed. He replaced his glasses and studiously avoided eye contact.

Horton sat back and in a lighter tone said, ‘How often did you see Natalie Raymonds running along the coastal path?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Never? On all the occasions you went there to spy on the little terns?’ Horton said, feigning surprise.

‘No.’ Bailey fidgeted.

‘I think you did, Peter, and maybe that’s when the idea first struck you. You thought her a perfect victim, a good-looking girl, alone, regular in her running habits.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Bailey stared at each of them in turn with a bewildered air.

Relentlessly Horton continued, ‘Perhaps you even spoke to Natalie. Maybe you fancied her and she laughed at you or told you to push off. Hurt and humiliated, an idea began to form in your mind on how to get back at her and at the same time get revenge on the man who had hurt your mother.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Bailey said sullenly. ‘I saw Luke Felton the day that girl was killed. I’d never met her before.’

‘Maybe you didn’t mean to kill Natalie. You just meant to put that tie around her throat, squeeze it a little to make her unconscious and then leave Felton to take the blame for assaulting her, but when you felt the power you had over her a better idea sprang to mind. She wouldn’t be able to laugh at you again if she was dead and Felton would be convicted for her murder. And just to make sure, you came forward to say you’d seen him on the path. It was justice for what he did to your mother. But then Luke was released on licence and started remembering. He called on you and begged you to tell the truth. But you couldn’t have that, so you killed him. What have you done with his body, Peter? Buried him in the garden?’

Bailey’s eyes widened with horror. ‘I don’t know where he is. I swear it. I thought that. .’

‘Yes?’

Bailey’s body slumped. He stared down at his trembling hands and muttered, ‘He ruined our lives, Mother’s and mine. I couldn’t leave her after that.’

‘You wanted to?’ Cantelli asked gently.

Bailey’s tormented eyes swung up to Cantelli. ‘I’d been offered a job abroad but after the attack she became an agoraphobic. She never stepped outside the front door from that day until they carried her out in her coffin ten years later. That’s what Luke Felton did to us, and what did he get for his crime, for wrecking our lives? Community service.’ There were tears in his eyes now as he added, ‘It was pitiful. A disgrace. He was made to clear up litter along the shore at Portchester Castle. I saw him there one lunchtime when I was working at Hester’s. I wanted to confront him but I couldn’t. It’s just not in my nature.’ Bailey dashed a hand across his eyes.

‘So you arranged to meet him at Portchester Castle last Tuesday night with a view to killing him. Where did you take him, Peter?’

He stared at Horton, confused. ‘Nowhere. I didn’t meet him. I haven’t seen him.’ Suddenly the tears began to roll down his creased face. ‘My mother was the gentlest, most trusting woman you could find. She didn’t deserve what he did to her. He killed her as good as if he’d stuck a knife in her heart.’

‘And is that why you killed him, Peter?’ Cantelli asked softly.

Bailey stared at him with anguished eyes. He sniffed noisily and ran a hand under his nose. ‘No, but it’s why I lied. You’re right, I didn’t see Luke that day. I made it up. I wasn’t anywhere near the coastal path. I was at home with my mother.’

And if Bailey was now telling the truth, where did that leave them? thought Horton. And where did it leave the original investigation? With a ruddy great hole in it.

Bailey began to gabble. ‘I didn’t think my evidence would help to convict him. I thought the police would find out before it got that far, but then Felton admitted the crime. I thought he must have been there. Everyone said he did it. I didn’t feel guilty. I remembered what he had done to my mother and thought that at last I’d got some kind of justice. I put him out of my mind until you showed up asking questions and I thought he might have remembered something about her murder and discovered I’d lied. I thought he might come after me.’

‘Maybe Felton did come after you, and you killed him,’ pressed Horton, quietly this time.

Bailey forced his head up with an effort. ‘No.’

‘He knew you’d lied and he wanted revenge for the years he’d spent inside. You had to kill him. Maybe it was self-defence. A jury would have sympathy with that.’

Bailey was shaking his head. ‘I haven’t seen him.’

Horton gave Cantelli a sign to continue. ‘Where were you last Tuesday from six o’clock onwards?’

‘At home.’

‘Can anyone vouch for you?’

Bailey looked thoroughly dejected. ‘No.’

After a moment Cantelli said brightly, ‘Been gardening, Peter?’ He jerked his head at the dirty fingernails.

Bailey blinked at the change of subject and stammered a reply. ‘I stumbled into a bramble.’

‘In your own garden!’

‘I didn’t have my spectacles on.’

Bailey looked at them both with pleading in his fearful eyes. Horton said, ‘We’ll search your house and garden.’

‘You’ll find nothing.’

The truth or a lie? Horton told Bailey he’d be held on suspicion of the murder of Luke Felton while they conducted a search of his premises. Bailey made no protest, he didn’t even ask for a solicitor or a warrant, but granted them permission to go ahead with a dumb inevitability that Horton found depressing.

Outside Cantelli said, ‘Could he have killed Natalie Raymonds?’

It was a question that Horton had been asking himself during the interview. Was Bailey capable of such a crime, and one that had required careful planning? The answer was yes. Bailey had been a design draughtsman, which meant he had an eye for detail, and he had a powerful motive.

‘If he did, then unless he admits it we’ll not be able to prove it. We might get lucky with the search, though, and find evidence to connect him with Felton’s disappearance. And we might even find Felton’s body. I’d like you on the search, Barney.’

Their conversation had taken them back to the CID office where Walters had returned footsore, wet and in bad humour. ‘The old lady they were burying on Friday was a Margery Blanchester, she was ninety-one,’ he said, throwing himself down in his chair with a heavy sigh. ‘None of the funeral directors match the description the gravedigger gave me, and I can rule out five of the eight mourners because three are women and the other two are men in their seventies. I’ll do the rest tomorrow.’

Horton consulted his watch and was surprised to see it was just after six, but there was someone he wanted to see before calling it a day and he wanted Cantelli with him.

‘Why do you want to interview Julian Raymonds?’ Cantelli asked, as they headed out of the city towards Hayling Island.

‘If Chawley didn’t check that Bailey was related to the pensioner Felton attacked, then what else didn’t he check?’

‘Raymonds’ alibi?’

‘Possibly, and even if Chawley knew Bailey was lying and kept silent to get a conviction it’s shoddy work, and it means we can’t trust a single thing in that case file, except the pathologist’s report. Chawley told me he’d checked Natalie’s background and looked for links between her and Luke, but how can we be sure? There’s nothing in the file I’ve read to indicate any of Natalie’s friends were interviewed, and there’s no record of where she went to school, where she worked, nothing. And if we put that with Lena Lockhart’s testimony and the missing tapes then we’ve got a very different case on our hands. One that needs reopening.’