Death Surge (9 page)

‘Not that I’m aware of.’

But one name had sprung into Horton’s mind. Stuart Jayston. OK, so he didn’t actually live at Hayling, but he did live at nearby Havant.

Cantelli said, ‘All he had to do was ask me, my brother Tony or Isabella, and we’d have taken him there.’

Horton threw Cantelli a glance.

Cantelli sighed. ‘OK, no need to spell it out. He didn’t want us to know. Why?’

‘Because you might disapprove,’ answered Horton.

‘You mean a girl?’

‘Not necessarily.’

Cantelli eyed him astounded. ‘You don’t mean Johnnie’s gay?’

Horton shrugged.

Cantelli was adamant that Johnnie wouldn’t have put his mother through so much worry if he had run off with a girl – or a man, come to that. But Horton wasn’t so sure; people did strange things when they were infatuated. He’d seen it happen before, and so too had Cantelli. There were women who men would leave their wives and kids for: they’d throw in good jobs, sacrifice their standing in the community and risk their reputation for them. They’d even kill for them. They breathed danger. Had someone like that got her claws into Johnnie? Sex was a powerful driver.

‘Let’s concentrate on what we’ve got,’ Horton said, sidestepping a gaggle of Japanese tourists and halting outside a café which was next to a tattoo parlour. ‘I’ll take the tattoo parlour and you ask in the café; someone might remember seeing him.’

It was a very long shot. Cantelli didn’t look hopeful, and Horton didn’t feel optimistic himself. The answer was as he expected: negative. They walked on; Horton hoped it would spark some ideas. Soon they came to the entrance of the Oyster Quays shopping complex, where Johnnie would have turned into in order to reach the marina. Ahead and on the opposite side of the road were the grounds of HMS
Temeraire
, home to the Royal Navy School of Physical Training, a satellite of the Maritime Warfare School, which was responsible for training members of the Royal Navy to become Physical Training Instructors. It made him think of Masefield and his crew. Masefield had said he was ex Royal Navy, but Horton had no idea what he’d done in the navy and he didn’t know in which services the crew had served. It didn’t matter anyway. That could hardly have any bearing on Johnnie’s disappearance.

He glanced up at the modern apartments behind a high brick wall on his right. Could Johnnie be staying with someone who lived here? But why not call his mother to tell her or his boss to say he wouldn’t be joining Masefield’s yacht in Cowes? Had he simply walked out on the job, so besotted with a woman that he didn’t care about anyone else including his family? And why wasn’t his mobile phone working? Did this girl (or man, as he’d suggested to Cantelli) have such a pull over Johnnie that she’d persuaded him to break off contact with everyone he knew and start again?

Horton stared at the busy road ahead. If Johnnie had continued walking straight on he would have passed one of the many university buildings in the city, the grammar school and Portsmouth Museum. But if he had taken the road on their right, he would have reached the Isle of Wight car ferry terminal. There was another entrance from there into Oyster Quays. It was a roundabout way for him to have arrived at the marina when it was much simpler to access it via the pedestrian underpass, but a thought suddenly struck Horton, which he voiced to Cantelli.

‘Perhaps Johnnie didn’t know or had forgotten that Masefield was picking him up in the yacht. Masefield claims not to have Johnnie’s mobile number, so Johnnie might not have had his either. He could have thought he had to make his own way to Cowes.’

‘You mean he took the ferry,’ Cantelli said, quickly catching on.

‘Yes.’ But Horton saw the flaw in that theory as they turned into Gunwharf Road and headed for the terminal, and it didn’t take long for Cantelli to spot it either.

‘Why didn’t he take the Fast Cat to the Island? All he had to do was step off the train and it’s right there.’

But Horton had an answer. ‘Perhaps he thought someone was collecting him by car.’ The Fast Cat only took foot passengers.

Cantelli looked far from reassured by his answer. Horton didn’t blame him, because if Johnnie had travelled to the Isle of Wight either via the car ferry as a passenger in a vehicle or as a foot passenger on the Fast Cat service it didn’t explain why he hadn’t shown up in Cowes.

They turned into the busy car park and several minutes later Horton, seated in a small and paper strewn office, was explaining the situation to Jean Spendlove, the ticket office supervisor – a middle-aged woman with short white blonde hair, who had a no-nonsense expression on her stern-featured face.

After flicking up the computer screen she said, ‘Eight people travelled by foot on the two sailings you mention, the four thirty and the five o’clock. Two paid by credit card and the names don’t match; the other six paid cash, and they were all day returns.’

So that seemed to rule out Johnnie: he would have purchased either a single or a period return. But Horton gave her a photograph of Johnnie and requested that it be circulated to the ticket office staff in case Johnnie had decided it wasn’t very much more expensive to buy a day return as a single. And there was still the chance that he had travelled as a passenger in a vehicle. Perhaps one of the marshalling staff or crew would remember seeing him.

Jean Spendlove looked up the rotas. ‘The relevant staff members won’t be on duty until midday tomorrow.’

Horton said he’d send someone over to interview them. He requested a print out of the vehicles booked on both sailings and a few minutes later left with a list of the vehicle registrations, the length of the vehicles, and the names of those who had made the bookings. There were rather a lot of them.

‘We can rule out the lorries and commercial vehicles,’ he said to Cantelli as they headed back to the car, but that still left about fifty vehicles to run through the database on each sailing. And Horton wasn’t sure what they were looking for. From a quick glimpse down the list none of the names matched those of Johnnie’s former partners in crime, but he hadn’t thought they would. He told Cantelli to contact the Isle of Wight police to find out if any taxi drivers had picked up Johnnie from the ferry terminal at Fishbourne. Tomorrow he’d send DC Walters to interview the marshalling staff and crew. And tomorrow he’d request the investigation be upgraded. They needed to make a public appeal.

At the station he left Cantelli to his calls and headed for his office. He’d barely stepped inside it when his mobile rang. It was Agent Eames.

‘Johnnie went ashore on the thirteenth and the sixteenth of July,’ she said.

‘Alone?’

‘Only on the sixteenth. On the thirteenth he went with a crew member to stock up on supplies from the local Waitrose supermarket. On the sixteenth, his day off, the tender from
Calista
took him into Cowes at eight thirty in the morning and collected him from Ryde at ten o’clock that night. No one knows where he went. The skipper, Nat Boulton, has asked the crew, but it seems Johnnie didn’t tell anyone. They assumed he went across to Portsmouth to visit his family.’

‘He didn’t. Any feedback on his mood?’

‘A couple of the crew thought he seemed excited, and there was talk that he might have got himself a girlfriend. That might just be hindsight though because they know he’s missing.’

‘Is it so unusual that he might have a girlfriend?’ Horton asked with sharp interest.

‘He’s very focused on his sailing. The general opinion seems to be that he didn’t have a lot of time for girls, and no one can remember seeing him with one. According to the skipper, Johnnie’s not one for wearing his heart on his sleeve or for gossiping or gadding about. He’s quiet, self-contained, gets on with his job and is discreet.’

Horton wished he could interview the crew, but he didn’t think Bliss would sanction a flight to Northern Sardinia – and that wasn’t where Johnnie was, anyway.

Eames said, ‘The skipper has checked his cabin. Johnnie’s clothes are still there.’

‘All of them?’ Horton asked, knowing Eames would have asked the question. He guessed the answer, but she confirmed when she replied.

‘He couldn’t say. But the photograph of his mother which he keeps in a drawer beside his bed is still there.’

Which indicated he planned to return … but then he could have taken other photographs of her with him and left that one to make them think he was returning, ditto the clothes. And he knew that if
he
was thinking that, Harriet Eames would also be considering it. She said, ‘Boulton says he’s met Scott Masefield a few times when he’s been with Xander but doesn’t really have anything to do with him. I can’t get hold of Sophia to ask her if she knows Masefield but I left a message on her voicemail.’

That made two of them. Horton relayed what the taxi driver had told them and added, ‘I’d like to know where Johnnie went on the sixteenth of July.’ It might have nothing to do with his disappearance, but an entire day out, which he hadn’t spent visiting his family, suggested either he’d spent it with a woman, visited old friends or perhaps he’d gone for a job interview. Horton hoped it was nothing more sinister, like meeting someone connected with an illegal activity. ‘Ask at the Cowes Red Jet and Red Funnel ferry terminals to see if he travelled to Southampton from there?’

‘I’ll also make enquiries at the Wightlink Fast Cat terminal and at Hover Travel in Ryde. He might have returned to the Island via that route, seeing as he was picked up by the tender from
Calista
at Ryde.’

‘I’m only assuming he was picked up at Ryde Marina.’ Horton reached into his pocket for his tide timetable. July the sixteenth … yes, it had been high tide at twenty-two forty-two so Ryde would have been accessible by boat. The tide went out a long way, leaving vast stretches of sandy beach, but at ten p.m. the tender – a small motorboat or RIB – could have moored up at the small marina. It would have been dark, and perhaps no one would have noticed a young man hopping on-board the boat, but he would ask the local police to show Johnnie’s photograph to the boat owners. He said as much to Eames, adding that he’d also circulate Johnnie’s picture to the taxi firms and bus companies in case anyone remembered seeing him on the sixteenth of July. Just because he was picked up from Ryde didn’t mean that he had left the Island. But Horton knew the chances of anyone remembering him so far back were pretty remote.

He joined Cantelli in CID where he relayed what Eames had discovered. Cantelli confirmed that none of the family had seen or spoken to Johnnie on the sixteenth of July.

‘I can’t see any sign of him on the CCTV from the railway station but the station is very busy so he could easily have slipped through. And there’s no sign of him either on the Oyster Quays cameras.’

Horton told him to start running the vehicles that had been booked on to the Wightlink ferry sailings through the database to see if any threw up connections with Johnnie. Again, Horton didn’t think they’d have any success because they didn’t really know what they were looking for. Cantelli probably thought the same, but doing something, anything, was better than doing nothing.

Horton returned to his office, but he couldn’t settle. His thoughts returned to the taxi driver’s evidence. If Johnnie had turned into Gunwharf Road but hadn’t entered the ferry terminal then where else could he have gone? A left turn at the ferry terminal would have taken him through Lombard Street to the Cathedral, and eventually from there he could have walked to the funfair and seafront where the hovercraft terminal was based. He could have travelled to the island via that route, and if he had, then he had disappeared on the Island. Harriet Eames was checking if Johnnie had travelled by hovercraft on the sixteenth of July but not last Wednesday. He called PC Seaton and asked him to do that as soon as he got the chance.

He let his thoughts return to Johnnie’s journey. If he hadn’t gone in that direction he could have walked straight ahead to the ancient fortifications of Old Portsmouth and the harbour, where he could have met someone. But there was another possibility, and the more he considered it the more likely it seemed. He should have thought of it earlier, but he’d been distracted by the idea of Johnnie catching the ferry.

Grabbing his jacket and his helmet he crossed to Cantelli in CID. ‘Johnnie could have met someone on a boat at the Camber.’

‘But if he did then where is he now?’

Horton didn’t know, but it didn’t bode well.

‘Could it have been Masefield?’ Cantelli asked anxiously.

‘You mean he changed the rendezvous point?’

Cantelli nodded.

‘If he did then it means he and his crew are implicated in Johnnie’s disappearance.’

Cantelli grew paler as thoughts chased themselves through his mind. ‘Could Johnnie have had an accident on-board and they’re covering it up?’ He didn’t need to spell out the consequences of that.

Or maybe, thought Horton, they’d got rid of him for some reason, and that also meant he had to be dead. ‘I’m heading down there,’ he said.

Cantelli looked as though he was about to ask if he could join him but there was still the list of vehicles to check.

Within ten minutes Horton was standing on the Camber quayside by the fish market. Across the small marina the Bridge Tavern was doing a roaring late-afternoon trade. The quayside opposite was packed with people drinking and eating, their voices and laughter carrying across to him on the warm breeze, which also brought with it the smell of fish and diesel, the latter from the Wightlink ferry he could see getting up steam to leave its berth.

The Camber manager wasn’t in his office but he’d be there tomorrow morning, Horton was told. He would have access to a list of vessels that had stayed overnight and those permanently moored there, but Horton couldn’t see how that was of any use. If Johnnie had met someone on-board a boat here then it could have been one that had slipped in and out of the marina within minutes, and there would be no record of that.

He found a handful of people on their yachts and motor cruisers but all of them shook their heads when he showed them Johnnie’s photograph, and none of them claimed to have been in the Camber last Wednesday. There were only three fishermen on-board one of the blue and white fishing boats, sorting out their nets and equipment. They had been out fishing on Wednesday at the time. It had been high tide. Horton decided he’d get a couple of officers out here tomorrow when the fish market was open and someone would be in the offices. He also considered conducting a house-to-house in the dwellings that overlooked the Camber, but for that he needed the inquiry upgraded to high priority.