Pauline Rowson - Blood on the Sand

He sprang up, cursing through his chattering teeth, and propelled himself on to the jetty, his speed and agility hampered by his sea-soaked clothes and his shivering body. He cried out as he grasped the jetty with his wounded arm, the pain ripping through his body. Then he was running towards them. Were there any bullets left in that gun? He hoped to God not. Would Thea get hurt? At last he was there, grabbing Laura, pinning her arm behind her.

'She attacked me,' Laura cried. 'She's mad. She killed her brother and Jonathan, and she tried to kill me.'

Horton stared at Thea's thin, drawn face and saw anxiety and fear. He turned to Laura. 'Good try and it might have worked if you had stuck to your original story and hadn't already confessed to me.'

'Prove it,' she shouted defiantly.

'I think this is proof enough.' He indicated his arm which was throbbing like mad.

'She grabbed the gun from me and shot you.'

Horton followed Laura's gaze and saw that Thea was holding the gun. Suddenly, realizing it was in her hand, Thea looked as though she was about to throw it in the sea when Horton quickly said, 'I'll take that.' He held out his hand but Thea seemed reluctant to pass it over. Quietly he said, 'It's OK, Thea. I know what happened.'

She handed it over. Keeping his strong right hand on Laura, and trying not to think of the pain in his left arm, he managed to disable the gun seeing, with relief, that the magazine was empty anyway.

'You've got no evidence to show I was involved in any of these murders,' Laura cried. 'She's the killer. She's unbalanced. Owen told me.'

'It won't work.' Horton said, dragging her towards the summer house with a feeling that maybe it would. She would deny everything she had told him. They had found no evidence that Laura had been in Anmore's barn, and even if they did she'd claim she had met Anmore in his barn on other occasions. And her car had not been seen anywhere near it. She must have parked it some distance away and walked to the barn, killed Anmore and then walked back to her car using a torch to guide her. There would be no evidence on her boat either, because they'd have washed it down, and the sea would have destroyed the rest. But they might get something from the summer house though Jonathan had probably hosed it out and scrubbed it down; a tiny shard of glass meant nothing. Even then they couldn't actually prove Laura had shot Owen. And no one could prove she had killed Arina, unless a witness came forward, which was unlikely, or the silent Julie would help them, but somehow he doubted that. All he could get her on was the Whitefields land fraud, but even then she'd claim that she had been young, and completely infatuated with Jack. And she knew it.

Was there something he had missed? Something that would prove she was the killer. She stared boldly and defiantly at him in the bright light of the summer house. Thea looked worried. Horton could imagine what was going through her mind. They would still believe she had killed her brother, and now her prints were on Laura's gun. But they had no real evidence to prove that Thea had killed Owen or Anmore, and she hadn't even been in the country when Arina was killed. She was safe… but even then his gut told him a clever barrister would make mincemeat of him, and tear Thea to shreds, and Laura Rosewood could afford the best there was.

As if reading his mind she repeated with conviction, 'There is no evidence linking me to any of this.'

With disgust, Horton thrust her on to the sofa. He was chilled to the bone and Thea was also soaked to the skin, but he couldn't use a blanket or any type of covering in here and risk contaminating any fragment of evidence that might still conceivably exist from Owen's murder. He didn't want to think about the maggots and how Jonathan must have cleaned this place out.

He said, 'They'll believe the word of a police officer rather than you.'

'Not one who was recently suspended for raping a girl,' she declared smugly. Thea eyed him warily. 'Especially when you stormed into my house, assaulted me and forced me to lie. I was running away from you when you attacked me. I had to shoot you in self-defence. Or perhaps I'll claim that Thea showed up to kill me because she knew that Owen had confided his concerns about his sister's health to me. She wrestled with me, took my gun and shot you. I am a very persuasive woman, Andy, and a highly respected one with very good contacts in the police and the European Commission.'

He believed her. She was clever all right, but maybe not quite clever enough. It was time to tell her something which, he hoped, might provoke her into a fit of remorse, though he wasn't counting on it.

With as much confidence as he could muster he said, 'It's all been for nothing, Laura.'

She looked surprised for a moment but still cocky. 'What do you mean?'

'All these deaths. You needn't have done them.'

'You're talking rubbish,' she snapped.

Now for it. 'The scandal at Whitefields that Christopher Sutton told his daughter about had nothing to do with your land deal. It was Sir Christopher's role there fifty years ago.'

'What are you talking about?' She eyed him with irritation.

'Sir Christopher was transferred from the British Military Hospital in Tripoli during his National Service in late 1958 because he was caught in bed with a female member of staff. He was sent to Whitefields where he agreed to help out on secret drug experiments with the mentally ill patients. He didn't much mind because it was his field of specialism, pioneering new mind drugs and therapies.' Horton didn't know this for a fact but he could hazard an educated guess that this was the scandal that Arina had alluded to, and why Bella Westbury had been his housekeeper.

He said, 'The year in question, 1959, was the height of the Cold War. And that was the secret Sutton confessed on his deathbed, which you overheard Arina telling Owen. And one which would cause an international political scandal if it ever came out. It had nothing to do with your sordid, money-grabbing crime.'

Laura was eyeing him as if he was mad, but he thought he detected a glimmer of uncertainty in her keen blue eyes — though that could be wishful thinking on his part.

He continued. 'When Arina died so suddenly, Owen began to wonder if it was true and if the security services had silenced Arina. So he attempted to find out. He called on Dr Nelson, Sutton's colleague at Tripoli, who told him about the nurse and Sutton being sent away. When you hinted to Owen that you might know something about Whitefields he thought you might have discovered this secret through your political contacts or that perhaps Sir Christopher had hinted to you what he had been doing there. Owen understood and was more than willing to go along with your demands for caution and secrecy because he knew how dangerous it was. You killed him for the wrong reasons, Laura. Owen had no idea about your fraud or the fact that you'd been involved in the murder of his parents.'

'Rubbish!'

But he could see her trying to grasp this new knowledge. Horton threw Thea a look. She seemed in control of her emotions, but he guessed the turmoil inside her. 'You could have got away with it, Laura. You could have carried on quite happily. It's all been for nothing.'

The truth was beginning to sink in. There wasn't so much confidence about her eyes. But still with a trace of defiance, she said, 'You still can't prove I've killed anyone.'

'I think Inspector Horton can,' Thea said quietly.

'What do you know about it?' Laura hissed at her.

Thea dashed a glance at Horton. She said, 'I had the last postcard my mother sent me lodged in a book called The Lost Ghosts of the Isle of Wight. It was a photograph of Whitefields, but I didn't know where it was, and what it meant, until I visited Gordon Elms and saw the painting on his wall. I asked Owen about it and then he told me what Arina had said about Whitefields. He was scared the house was bugged so we talked in Owen's wild garden.'