Shroud of Evil (31 page)

He thought of the long habits the monks wore with the cowl draped around their heads, the gown reaching the ground, their hands tucked in the wide sleeves. There was a great deal covered up. Whatever scar or physical defect Tandy had couldn’t be on his face because that was visible and so too were some of the monks’ feet, often clad in sandals. Horton’s mind darted to the beachcomber’s suntanned feet in tatty sandals. But he hadn’t seen anything remarkable about them. And the beachcomber was too old to be Tandy but, as he’d considered before, there was the possibility he had killed to protect Tandy.

Something stirred at the back of Horton’s mind. Mentally he recalled the beachcomber stretching across a tattered business card with strong bronzed hands that hadn’t looked like any artist Horton had come across, although admittedly he hadn’t met many. But he had seen Mason Petterson’s hands with his long, slender fingers and there had been paint under the nails. His mind leapt to Louise Durridge’s manicured nails and the ring on her finger that Petterson had given her years ago and suddenly he was transported back to 1967. His body went rigid. His heart beat fast as his mind raced, trying to make sense of what he was thinking. Images flashed before him of Brother Norman’s slender hand coming out of the sleeve of his habit when Horton had come here to tell him about the sentencing of the men who had robbed the abbey. A glimmer of sunlight, a smile, before the hand had gone back into the sleeve. Brother Norman had been wearing a ring. Horton had never seen him wearing it before, he was certain of that. The breath caught in his throat as he tried to recall exactly what the ring had been like. His thoughts had been occupied by paint on an artists’ hand. Brother Norman had apologized for the dirt under his fingernails from his gardening. Then it came to him. It had been gold, a signet ring, and there had been a stone in it, deep red. And he’d seen that ring before.

‘Andy, are you there?’ Cantelli’s concerned voice broke through Horton’s thoughts.

With an effort he pulled himself together. ‘Yes.’ He hurried towards the café. ‘Check Sam Tandy’s medical records, photographs and bios on the website for any physical disabilities or scars. Let me know the moment you find anything.’

He rang off. The café was closed but there was a light on inside. Horton banged on the door and soon a figure hurried to answer his summons.

‘Can I help you, Inspector?’ Cliff Yately said, clearly worried. His hand was still bandaged and his arm in the sling. Behind him Jay Ottley emerged from the kitchen, a tatty leather hat low over the brow of his grizzled greying long hair and his gloved hands carrying a large bucket of slops.

‘I need to see Brother Norman urgently,’ Horton said.

‘I can ask in the abbey for you.’

But Ottley interjected, ‘I saw him walk down to the old abbey about five minutes ago.’

‘Thanks.’ Horton dashed out and ran towards the ruins. His head was spinning, his body fuelled with adrenalin, his heart hammering fit to bust. He drew up at the small field that led down to the moss and bracken-covered ancient wall. Leaping over the gate he raced across the grass towards it. Dusk was falling and the wind was blowing chill off the sea. He could hear the waves rushing on to the shore. Frantically he searched for an entrance and finally found a small gap where the brickwork was crumbling. As he squeezed through it he registered it hadn’t been used much, which confirmed to him that there must be a way on to the shore from behind the abbey.

He paused. The tide was on the rise but it wouldn’t be high water yet for about four hours. To his right the shore led towards the Veermans’ house but that was hidden from view and not accessible by the beach. He turned left and with a growing sense of urgency ran along the shingled shore to where it curved inwards. There he drew up sharply. Rapidly he took in the lean figure bending over a small dinghy with an outboard engine on the rear. Behind it was a timber boathouse, the door ajar. Horton couldn’t see inside but he knew that it must once have contained an old sail cloth that had ended up wrapped around Kenton’s body.

The man straightened up. He turned and nodded knowingly with a smile curving the thin lips. The serious, solemn and rather sad monk with the hood hiding the sides of his face had vanished and in its place was a confident, younger-looking man. Horton thought his heart must have stopped beating. The air became still. The wind dropped and his brain swiftly rearranged all his theories and speculations.

He’d been wrong. Kenton hadn’t found Sam Tandy. He’d found someone else. Someone connected with Lord Eames, and that was why his body had been placed on Lord Eames’ beach. Because in front of Horton was one of the two remaining men he’d been seeking who featured in a photograph taken on 13 March 1967.

‘J
asper Kenton traced
you
,
not Sam Tandy,’ Horton said, eyeing Antony Dormand closely, trying desperately to make sense of what he was seeing. Dormand looked so different out of the black habit that Horton could hardly believe it was Brother Norman. The casual dark trousers, black high-neck jumper and black waterproof jacket made him appear taller and fitter and the beginnings of a close-cropped beard and the absence of the cowl around his face showed more of the resemblance to the young man with the beard in the photograph from 1967. There was no meek stoop about him now. How long had Dormand been a monk here? What had brought him here? Was he in fact really a monk or just masquerading as one? So many questions assailed Horton that they made his head ache. It was difficult to know where to start.

‘I doubt that, Inspector Horton. Even you couldn’t trace me without a little help and I wasn’t sure you were going to work it out in time.’

Time for what? Before Dormand made his escape, Horton guessed, judging by the boat beside him. ‘The ring, you mean.’ Horton’s eyes fell on it. ‘You weren’t wearing it when I first came here.’

‘No. Hands are so important, don’t you think? They don’t lie.’

Horton studied Dormand carefully. He caught a hidden meaning behind his words which registered in his teeming brain but which he quickly filed away to be analysed and dealt with later.

‘You knew I had the photograph.’ Horton tried to keep his voice steady although his heart was pounding. ‘Otherwise there would have been no point in you putting on the ring when I came to tell you about the sentencing of the two thieves.’ In that photograph from 1967 Dormand had his hand draped over Rory Mortimer’s shoulder and he’d been wearing a ring. Horton remembered how Dormand had held up his hand refusing the offer of a drink, and how he had seen in Dormand’s face something that had jarred with him. He’d also sensed a subdued energy in the monk’s lean body and seen something deep and dark in his eyes that had reminded him of the beachcomber, Lomas, and which he’d considered had reflected an accumulation of life’s experiences. He wondered what Dormand’s life had held before he’d ended up here.

‘Did Richard Eames tell you I had the photograph?’ Horton asked. Or had it been Ballard? There was also Professor Thurstan Madeley who had pulled together the archive project on the sit-in protest of 1967 but who had omitted to include the photograph Ballard had left Horton on his boat. Madeley had pointed Horton towards Dr Quentin Amos, who could also have made contact with Dormand. When Dormand didn’t answer, Horton continued. ‘Did you put Jasper Kenton’s body on Richard Eames’ property?’

Dormand’s lips twitched in the ghost of smile and behind the cool blue eyes Horton registered a steeliness he hadn’t seen before and which sent a cold shiver down his spine.

Eames must have picked up Dormand’s activities from his security sensors. It would have been dark then but Eames’ security probably had infrared sensors. Eames must have believed that Kenton had unearthed Brother Norman’s true identity and been killed because of it, which was why he’d ordered the softly-softly approach to the investigation and let him believe Brett Veerman could be involved in order to protect Dormand and his new identity. But if Eames and Dormand were working in cohort then why would Dormand dump the body there? Why not dump it miles away and make sure it sank to the bottom of the sea? Because Eames had no idea of Dormand’s new ID and Dormand wanted Eames to know where he was. But if that was the case then why hadn’t Eames sent someone to deal with Dormand? Maybe he had, Horton thought with a shiver. The beachcomber, Lomas. Only Dormand had dealt with him first.

Lomas and Eames had been on the trail of Antony Dormand and Dormand had discovered this. Lomas had been living in one of those stone buildings close to Eames’ house, which Horton had inspected and found remarkably empty, too empty. So maybe he hadn’t been there but inside Eames’ house. Lomas had seen Horton approach on Friday and make for the woods. All Lomas had to do was head through the rear of Eames’ property, let himself out the back entrance, jump down from the pontoon and hide around the side of the creek until he was ready to make his encounter with him. Lomas already knew who he was. Eames would have told him.

Lomas had then returned to the house and had been inside it when Uckfield had sent Danby inside to check nothing had been stolen. Danby was probably oblivious to his presence. Was Lomas still there or had he made off after the discovery of Kenton’s body on the shore under Eames’ instructions? Or had Dormand killed him? Perhaps Lomas had been here to flush out the man everyone seemed to be looking for – Antony Dormand.

Horton eyed Dormand coldly and with anger churning his gut. Was this the man who had killed Jennifer and had condemned him to a lonely and cruel childhood? His fists clenched and his body stiffened. Or had Lomas been working independently? Was Lomas the man that Eames and his cronies wanted Horton to flush out? And who Dormand was after? Was Lomas his mother’s killer?

Horton still couldn’t make sense of it all. He needed answers to the multitude of questions swimming round in his head. ‘Did you know I was on that shore the Friday before you dumped Kenton’s body there?’

Dormand said nothing, which indicated to Horton that he did. And if Eames hadn’t told him directly then either Lomas had done so and had come here after seeing him on the shore or Dormand had managed to hack into Eames’ security system.

‘The beachcomber I saw on the shore on Friday, who is he, Dormand? Is it Rory Mortimer? The sixth man in the photograph?’

‘No, he’s dead.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I killed him.’

Horton was taken aback.

‘Under orders, of course.’ Dormand seemed completely unperturbed. ‘Mortimer was a traitor, as were Royston and Wilson, selling secrets to the Russians.’

‘You killed them too!’ Horton cried, unable to believe what he was hearing, but afraid it was the truth. ‘And Zachary Benham? Was he selling secrets?’

‘No, he was trying to unearth them and died doing so.’

‘In a psychiatric hospital. What was he doing there?’

‘We don’t know. I suspect someone would like to find out.’

Horton felt confused and angry. ‘But all that was years ago,’ he insisted. ‘It’s history and the Cold War is over.’ But he remembered Quentin Amos’s words about it never being over, not as far as terrorism was concerned, and Horton knew that all too well.

‘There are other threats,’ Dormand answered, echoing Horton’s thoughts. ‘Some more dangerous and deadlier than we have ever faced in our history. It can start in a very small way and if not contained, if information is not gathered, analysed and imparted in the right quarters, and certain parties eliminated, it can escalate out of all control.’

Horton thought of the hate crime of the paint sprawled on restaurant walls. It had been trivial, carried out by someone who just wanted to earn a quick and crooked buck. But it could have been deadly serious.

Dormand continued. ‘It can end in bloody carnage and the slaughter of innocent people. Cast your mind back to 1978, when Jennifer disappeared, what was happening then? If you don’t know then read it up and you’ll soon see what Jennifer was involved with.’

But Horton already knew. Harry Kimber had given him that information:
‘November 1978
…
it was before those terrible bombs were set off by the IRA in towns and villages across Northern Ireland
…
and then all those bombs in December in Bristol, Coventry, Liverpool, Manchester, and just up the road in Southampton. The IRA said they were gearing up for a long war
.
’
It was the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

‘You’re saying that Jennifer had intelligence on the IRA?’

‘It’s a dirty business, Inspector, as you no doubt know or are finding out.’

‘And my mother was involved in this dirty business in 1967. She’d been working for the intelligence services, feeding information to them on the members of the Radical Student Alliance.’

Horton recalled what he’d read. There had been the mass anti-Vietnam War rally in Grosvenor Square in 1968, the violent student protests at the London School of Economics in 1969, a British Minister’s home had been bombed in 1971 and there was a massive expulsion of Soviet spies in 1971. And if Jennifer had been in some way linked to the troubles in Northern Ireland then Horton recollected the horrific bombing of Aldershot Barracks in 1972 that had killed six people and the bombs that were set off in Manchester City, Victoria Station, Kings Cross and Oxford Street in 1973. And in 1973 Jennifer had left London with her small son.

Horton said, ‘So you’d had enough. Is that why you came here, to escape? To hide,’ he goaded.

‘An intelligence agent can never hide.’

Horton narrowed his eyes. ‘You mean Jennifer couldn’t hide even when she fled London with me and tried to start a new life in Portsmouth with nothing and knowing no one. Who was she running away from?’

‘I think you might need to rephrase that.’

Horton froze. He felt sickened. This was incredible. It couldn’t be true and yet if he pieced together the fragments of information and facts he’d discovered over the last year he knew it could be. It completely turned on its head all his thoughts and preconceptions and memories of his mother. ‘Who was she running to?’