Death Surge (19 page)

And how could he let smooth bastards like Lord Eames win? He couldn’t. That was what they wanted. As his fury ebbed, his brain began to function again. Had someone from the intelligence services broken into Teckstone’s office in the last week, opened the safe, extracted the contents of the envelope, replaced them with blank paper and managed to reseal it? Or had it been a member of staff? Was Teckstone himself guilty? No, Horton didn’t think so, and any break-in would have been reported. He would check with the local police just to make certain, but the one factor that dispelled that theory were those dates on the reverse of the envelope. He descended into the cabin and studied the back of the envelope. They had to mean something, especially if Amos had deliberately put blank sheets inside the envelope.

He sat down heavily and stared at the figures. Perhaps Amos was trying to tell him something and had made his message obscure because he knew the intelligence services were watching him and might discover the envelope. If so, then why hadn’t they taken it and destroyed it? Or altered the figures on the outside? The figures didn’t appear to have been tampered with. Had Amos been
instructed
to leave this cryptic message for him?

He rubbed his forehead. Did this have any link with Sawyer’s theories about Zeus and his mother running off with him? How could it, though? Amos wouldn’t know about that. No, he was way off beam there, but maybe he should talk to Sawyer, who so far had made no fresh attempt to talk to him about Zeus or try and persuade him to flush Zeus out. Why hadn’t he? Perhaps he was waiting for the right moment. And perhaps tomorrow Horton would give him that.

He knew sleep wouldn’t come easy, so he switched on his laptop and keyed in the dates, just as he’d done before with the thirteenth of March, 1967. The results were disappointing. They didn’t refer to any significant event. No, that would have been too bloody easy. So what did they mean? Perhaps the dates referred to something that had only been newsworthy locally. He’d have to check with the newspaper archives. Or, he thought despondently, they could refer to something that had happened anywhere in the UK but hadn’t warranted national media coverage. Perhaps added together they signified something, but what, for devil’s sake? He again studied them:
01.07.05
and
5.11.09
. Why wasn’t there a zero in front of the second five? Amos had put a zero in front of the other single numbers, so why not that one? Had it been just a simple omission?

His head ached. He was soaking wet, and he was weary rather than tired. It was clear he wasn’t going to get much further forward tonight. He switched off the computer, showered and lay on his bunk with the envelope and its blank pages under the pillow. His ears were attuned for the sound of any unusual movement on the pontoon that suggested someone trying to break-in, because there was always the chance that the letter hadn’t been tampered with and that the intelligences services didn’t know its contents. His thoughts returned to Sawyer and then Agent Harriet Eames and finally to Johnnie. It was better to think of Johnnie than himself. He had time, Johnnie didn’t. But even then his thoughts merely took him round in circles.

He must have fallen asleep at some stage because when he woke it was morning and it had stopped raining. The wind was still brisk though, which would please Masefield and Crawford, and his ex father-in-law Toby Kempton, who was teaching Emma to sail. Shit. He felt awful. He went for a run to try and stimulate his brain into action and to shrug off the weariness and despair he felt but the physical activity failed to conjure up the meaning of those figures and did little to lift his mood.

With the envelope in his jacket pocket, he was in his office, and ringing Woking police to ask if any break-ins had been reported at Teckstone’s solicitors in the last week, when Walters lumbered into CID, eating a bar of chocolate, and settled himself at his desk. A dejected and drawn Cantelli followed. The answer from Woking was no.

With Cantelli and Walters, Horton headed for the briefing in the incident suite, but he might just as well not have bothered. There was nothing new to report.

There had to be something more they could do. That
he
could do. He couldn’t just sit around and wait for all the statements to come in and reports to be checked!

Trueman’s phone rang just as Uckfield was wrapping up the briefing. Uckfield paused as Trueman looked up and nodded at him while listening. ‘OK, I’ll tell the Super. That was the front desk,’ he announced, coming off the line. ‘We’ve got a visitor in the interview room. It’s Darlene Chambers, Ryan Spencer’s partner, and she’d very much like to know what we’ve done with him?’

‘W
ell?’ Uckfield demanded as Horton entered the incident suite forty-five minutes later and crossed to the water cooler.

‘I’m ninety nine per cent certain the body we have in the mortuary is Ryan Spencer,’ he answered, pouring himself a plastic cup of water and glancing at Cantelli. His expression of relief was almost instantly replaced with bewilderment followed by concern. Horton knew why. If it was Ryan Spencer who’d been killed at the Hilsea Lines, then where was Johnnie? And did this blow out Uckfield’s theory of Andreadis being blackmailed and Sawyer’s of Johnnie being involved in international robberies? That interview they hadn’t had with Stuart Jayston was now looking much more relevant.

‘Darlene has confirmed that Ryan has a tattoo of some kind of bird on his right arm. And she last saw him on Monday morning, when Cantelli and I interviewed him. A patrol car has taken her home, and she’s given us permission to search Ryan’s belongings on the understanding that if we find anything there that’s nicked she knows nothing about it. They’ll get something we can take a DNA sample from, but we won’t get dental records because, according to Darlene, Ryan was so scared of dentists he wouldn’t go within twenty miles of one. And we can’t get DNA from the kids because they’re not Ryan’s. They’ve only been together for three months. Before then Ryan lived in a bedsit in the centre of the city.’

‘What about Ryan’s parents?’ asked Bliss.

Eames, who had been with Horton during the interview on Uckfield’s orders, answered: ‘Darlene claims both are dead.’

‘Did you tell her about the body?’ asked Uckfield, scratching his crotch, which drew a pinched look of distaste from Bliss. A reason, Horton thought, for Uckfield to do it even more.

‘Yes. But not how badly burnt it was,’ Horton replied. ‘She shed some tears but I got the impression they were for show rather than genuine sorrow, although that might come later.’ Perhaps she really did love him? Perhaps the black eye she was sporting had been caused by her little boy bashing her in the face with a toy, as she claimed, but neither he nor Eames thought so.

Uckfield moved his hand from his crotch to run it through his short greying hair as Horton continued. ‘She says she has no idea what Ryan was doing at the Hilsea Lines. She claims she didn’t even know the place existed, and I believe her. She also says she doesn’t know what time Ryan left the house. She took the kids for a McDonald’s at twelve and then went shopping. She didn’t get home until about three forty-five, and Ryan wasn’t there.’

‘Didn’t she think it strange when he didn’t return home on Monday night?’ asked Walters.

Eames answered. ‘No. She claims he often goes out on a bender and stays out, leaving her to look after the kids. After all, they’re not his, as he keeps reminding her.’

‘Only she expressed it more graphically and colourfully,’ Horton added.

‘I bet she did,’ grunted Uckfield.

Horton said, ‘If she complains she’s told to shut her mouth, and we saw the evidence of that. She didn’t have that black eye when Cantelli and I interviewed her on Monday, so they obviously had a row shortly after we left, and it could have been about why we were questioning Ryan. She says he went up to their room immediately after we left and she caught him texting on his phone. When she asked what was going on he told her to shut up.’

Frowning, Bliss said, ‘So why report him missing if he knocked her about? I’d have thought she’d have said good riddance.’

Horton said, ‘Some women want the bastards back no matter what they do. When he didn’t come home Tuesday, she checked his clothes and belongings. He’d taken nothing with him except the phone, which she says is new. He’d only had it a couple of weeks, and before you ask it’s pay as you go, so no chance of checking calls. Eames has tried the number Darlene gave us. There’s no signal. When he didn’t show up this morning, Darlene went down to the benefit office knowing he would be there to sign on, but he wasn’t. She asked if he’d been in, they said not and that no one had seen him. That’s when she began to worry. She got someone to look after the kids and got a taxi here.’

Bliss’s keen gaze fell briefly on Cantelli before she turned it on Uckfield. Crisply, she said, ‘Could this make Johnnie Oslow a suspect?’

Cantelli opened his mouth to reply but Horton got there first. ‘If he did kill Ryan, which I doubt, then he’s taken his time. If we’d discovered Ryan dead last Thursday morning or even Wednesday night and then Johnnie missing it might have made more sense, but the timing is wrong for Johnnie to be our killer. And where’s the motive?’

Cantelli threw him a grateful look and said, ‘I can’t see Ryan Spencer being involved in these international jewel robberies, and I certainly can’t see Johnnie having confided in him. There’s no indication that he’s been in touch with Ryan since that day in court seven years ago.’

Horton had been considering this while interviewing Darlene. ‘Darlene doesn’t know where Ryan got the mobile phone and he wouldn’t say. I think she assumes it was stolen, but what if his killer gave it to him as a means of keeping in touch?’

‘Why?’ demanded Bliss.

Horton crossed the room to the map on the crime board that contained Johnnie’s details. ‘This is where the taxi driver saw Johnnie at the Hard, and Johnnie walked away in the direction of the entrance to Oyster Quays, where he never arrived. If he didn’t turn right into Gunwharf Road, he could have crossed the road by HMS
Temeraire
and walked up Park Road.’ He ran his finger along the road running in a south easterly direction. ‘And if he crossed Anglesea Road and turned into White Swan Road, look at where he’d come out? Yes, Guildhall Walk and the White Swan pub, where Ryan Spencer spent that afternoon.’

Uckfield pulled a wooden toothpick from his trouser pocket and inserted it in his mouth where he proceeded to chew it. ‘So who was Ryan getting his instructions from? And why lure Johnnie away?’

‘In order to dispose of him,’ said Dennings promptly, without any sense of feeling for Cantelli’s nerves. ‘Then, having done his bit, Ryan is killed.’

Cantelli blanched.

Uckfield rejoined, ‘Which means we’re back to DCS Sawyer’s and Agent Eames’ motive that Johnnie knew too much.’

‘But why use Ryan?’ Horton insisted. He was about to add
and how did the killer know about Ryan’s connection with Johnnie?
but the words froze on his lips. There were two people who might have discovered that connection from the Go About sailing charity: Scott Masefield and Martin Leighton. Either of them could have gained access to Johnnie’s file while there, especially once they knew he worked for the billionaire Xander Andreadis. The plan to steal valuables on the sailing circuit could have been hatched years ago. They hadn’t killed Ryan, because they had been in Cowes, but again he considered the possibility of them having an accomplice on the mainland. Masefield, armed with information about Johnnie’s past conviction, had sought out the member of the gang with the most criminal convictions and the one mostly in need of money. He’d paid Ryan to get Johnnie somewhere and had given Ryan the phone in order that he might receive his orders. Once Johnnie had been lured away and probably killed, this accomplice had killed Ryan.

He said nothing about his suspicions regarding Masefield and Leighton but added, ‘Johnnie might have known he was meeting Ryan. The killer could have made sure that Ryan contacted Johnnie on his mobile phone, spun him a yarn about how he’d reformed, or perhaps he threatened Johnnie that if he didn’t show for a meet he’d let on to his boss about the fire or some other misdemeanour they hadn’t got caught for. Whatever it was it was enough for Johnnie to agree to meet him.’

‘And then what?’ Uckfield growled.

Trueman came off the phone. ‘Stuart Jayston is on site at a customer’s house. It’s on Hayling Island.’

Cantelli quickly caught on. Looking troubled, he said, ‘They took a taxi to Hayling Island to meet Stuart.’

But that didn’t sound right to Horton, and there were other things bugging him about his theory. ‘Why would a gang of highly sophisticated thieves risk using Ryan Spencer and Stuart Jayston when it would be much easier to deal with Johnnie directly and away from his home patch, say in London?’ It didn’t add up, but then none of it did.

Uckfield hauled himself up. ‘Perhaps they decided to reform the old gang and go in for a bit of business on their own account, with Johnnie supplying information on some wealthy people for them to target.’

Cantelli looked pained. Uckfield continued, ‘They rowed; perhaps one of them said he wasn’t going to play ball, although I can’t see that being Ryan Spencer. But he ends up dead and they flash up his body in the hope it will cover their tracks. They’ve been convicted of arson before so they revert to their old methods. Yeah, I know it’s weak and we need some bloody answers to questions.’ He addressed Horton. ‘Interview this Stuart Jayston.’ To Cantelli, Uckfield said, ‘Take Walters with you and talk to Tyler Godfray. If we don’t get some straight answers bring them in.’ Uckfield turned to Trueman. ‘Get a team asking around the White Swan to confirm any sightings of either or both of them last Wednesday and get hold of the security camera footage from there and along Guildhall Walk. Get on to the taxi firms that work that area. Agent Eames, write up the interview with Darlene Chambers. DCI Bliss, DI Dennings, my office.’ He stomped off leaving Bliss to strut after him and Dennings to swagger.