I couldn’t just sit around and kick my heels until then though. I had to do something to find Andover but the trail was getting colder by the minute. There was only one person left for me to try and that was Couldner’s daughter, Lorraine Proctor. I hurried out to the car where I’d left Joe’s reports containing the last address he had for her. She lived just outside Chichester, not far from the marina. It was quite a way to travel if she wasn’t in so I would telephone her from the first call box I came to. Before I could climb into the car a voice hailed me and I turned to see the blonde goddess from Brading church heading towards me.
She was dressed for hiking in shorts and walking boots. Her honey blonde hair shone like something out of a hair advertisement. She looked the picture of such perfect health and vitality that she made me feel positively ill. I turned to see Scarlett at the door of her houseboat.
‘What happened to you?’ the blonde goddess said, a concerned expression on her beautiful face.
‘I fell over. Too much to drink I expect,’ I joked, impatient to be away. I heard Scarlett’s door slam.
‘You’re Alex Albury. Percy Trentham told me after I described meeting you in Brading church.
I’m Deeta.’
What else had Percy told her? That I was an ex con? If he had it didn’t seem to bother her. I took the hand she proffered. Her grip was strong and dry. I didn’t feel quite so much the embarrassed adolescent this time of meeting her, though I did silently wince at the memory of my ineptitude at our last encounter.
‘How do you know Percy?’ I was still suspicious of her.
‘He has a metal detector. I see him on the beach sometimes. He’s a mine of information about the Second World War.’
I recalled she had said she was writing a book about the Island at war. I didn’t like to tell her that some of Percy’s war stories were very dubious. She was the historian; she would check her sources.
She said, ‘My grandfather lived here during the early part of the war. Percy said you used to live in Bembridge House and that your grandfather built the folly there as an air raid shelter. It’s a remarkable piece of architecture. Percy said your grandfather was a very important man in the war.’
‘I don’t think so. He died in a sailing accident in 1940. I shouldn’t trust everything Percy tells you.’
‘He likes to exaggerate. I looked your family up though. Did you know that you are descended from the Anglo-Saxons?’
‘That might explain why I feel so old and tired sometimes.’
She laughed. Despite all my problems I couldn’t prevent my loins from again responding to her beauty and her sensuality.
She said, ‘Do you have any records that your father or grandfather left?’
‘Sorry, no.’ Any other time I would like to have talked to her. I would have flirted with her and I would certainly have invited her out for a drink.
Now I was running out of time. She caught my agitation.
‘I’m holding you up. Perhaps I will see you when you have more time.’
‘I’d like that.’ I watched her go with some sorrow. After almost four years without sex I meet a woman interested in me and I haven’t got the time! That was sod’s law for you all right.
I pulled up at a call box and punched in Lorraine Proctor’s number. A lady answered who told me that Mrs Proctor would be back at two o’clock.
‘Are you from the agency?’ she asked.
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘The estate agency. Is it about the house?’
‘Oh yes, that’s right,’ I said quickly, my mind racing. ‘Who am I speaking to?’
‘Mrs Ellis. I’m Mrs Proctor’s cleaner.’
‘Of course. Don’t worry about any message, Mrs Ellis. It’s not urgent. I’ll call her later.’
Two o’clock, that gave me enough time to get to Chichester and find the house. Dear Mrs Ellis had given me my intro.
I rang Miles first though before setting out.
‘What’s the latest on Joe’s death?’
‘Random attack. Burglar after money.’
‘What was he strangled with?’
‘Something soft, a tie or scarf.’
Not bare hands then. Different to Westnam’s strangulation, which could possibly indicate two killers: Rowde having killed Westnam and Andover, Joe.
‘A burglar wearing a tie!’ I said. ‘Must be a pretty smart burglar.’ For some reason Gus, immaculate in that suit and tie sitting in the kitchen, sprang to mind.
‘Could have been a scarf, used to cover the lower part of the face so he couldn’t be recognised.’
I gave him that one but I didn’t go along with the random burglar theory.
‘What about Sergeant Hammond, Clipton’s sidekick?’
‘He really did win the lottery.’
‘Lucky him.’
I rang off and headed for the mainland. I reached Chichester just before one o’clock and parked in the multi-storey next to Waitrose. It was a bit of a long shot but if the house was up for sale then I guessed one of the more upmarket estate agents in the city would have the details on it.
I struck lucky at the third one I came to in East Street after collecting a number of housing details from the others, none of which matched Lorraine Proctor’s address. Fifteen minutes later I left the estate agents clutching the details of Harbourside House and with an appointment to view, unaccompanied by the agent, which was a stroke of luck on a property worth almost a million pounds. But then I was due some luck and I had pushed hard for the appointment. I told them I had a meeting scheduled in London later that afternoon. I spun some yarn about being an IT entrepreneur with cash to burn in my pocket and the desperate need to find a house quickly for myself and family that was close to Chichester Harbour and with a mooring for my yacht. They all bought it. Goodness knows whether it would lead me to any information about Andover but I had to try. I had used the story about having an accident with a Mercedes on my return from the States to explain my battered and bruised face.
Lorraine Proctor opened the door to me. She was exquisitely dressed in camel-coloured trousers and a cream shirt that could only have come from a top designer. She, like the house, was a bit too polished and modern for me. It made me yearn for the informality of my houseboat. The thought rather surprised me.
Before prison I would have wet myself in anticipation of living in a house like this, individually designed and commissioned by the owners with a glazed atrium, five bedrooms, a swimming pool and access to the harbour. Now I no longer aspired to it. In fact I wouldn’t have wanted it as a gift.
‘Mr Hardley?’
‘Yes.’ I’d used my mother’s maiden name. ‘It’s very good of you to see me at such short notice.’
‘Not at all. Where would you like to start?’
‘Downstairs, I think.’
She hadn’t recognised me behind the bruises or the white hair. I had wondered if she might.
Neither had she shown any shock at my battered face, nor asked me questions about it, I guessed the agent had called her to explain.
After a tour of the hall, sitting room, kitchen and breakfast room we stepped into the study.
From here I could look out across the garden to the upper reaches of Chichester Harbour and to the South Downs beyond. It was beautiful. A sailor’s paradise with a Bavaria 42 yacht moored at the bottom of the garden.
‘It’s perfect,’ I said, thinking more of the yacht and location than the house. On the tour we’d chatted about how long she’d lived here: six years. What her husband did for a living: consultant surgeon. I was wondering how to bring up the subject of her father and Andover.
Waiting for inspiration I gazed at photographs of racing yachts on the walls. ‘You sail?’ I asked.
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