Suffocating Sea (20 page)

‘Can’t this wait until tomorrow?’

Horton remained silent. With a huff she swung round and obviously expected them to follow, which they did as she led them through a hall the size of a football pitch.

‘This is like something out of
The Bishop’s Wife
,’ Cantelli said under his breath, but she heard him.

‘What?’ She swung round.

‘The sergeant likes old movies,’ Horton explained.

She glared at Cantelli as if he had a screw loose. Cantelli smiled then raised his eyebrows at Horton as soon as her back was turned.

She led them through a second door and into another hall.

Horton thought the house was going to go on for ever, then she threw open a door to their left and ushered them into a gymnasium.

Curtly she said, ‘I’ll let my father know you’re here.’

‘Perhaps she thinks we need the exercise,’ Cantelli said, gazing around with distaste. ‘Looks like a modern torture chamber to me.’

Horton wondered why she had brought them here. In a house this size there must be other more suitable rooms for them to have waited in. OK, so the kitchen might be out of bounds if Sunday lunch was being prepared, ditto the dining room, but what about a sitting room or a study? They could even have waited in one of the two reception halls. Perhaps he was just being suspicious but he got the impression that Selina Gilmore didn’t want them nosing round the house.

Horton crossed to a rowing machine as Cantelli tried an interconnecting door on the far side of the room. It was locked.

‘Where do you reckon that leads to?’

‘The swimming pool.’ Horton jerked his head in the direction of the window to the left of the door that gave on to the carbuncle he’d seen from the gates on their first visit here.

‘Very nice,’ Cantelli said, gazing through it. ‘Olympic size too. There’s a lot of money here, Andy.’

Was it too much for one man to have made from a successful fishing business? ‘Remind me to get his accounts checked out.’

Horton climbed off the rowing machine after a few easy pulls. Cantelli mooched around the room, sitting on the exercise bicycle and then standing on the running machine. He ended up on one of the benches but made no attempt to lift the weights.

‘I asked Dad about the Gilmores last night. He remembers Sebastian’s father, Terry Gilmore. Says he was a fierce character, everyone was scared to death of him. He was a very determined man and tough, but a worker. Dad thinks he had a stroke in the seventies which was when Sebastian must have taken over.’

As if he’d heard his name the door burst open and Sebastian stomped in. Once again Horton felt his energy fill the room, and large though the gymnasium was it suddenly felt very small. Gilmore didn’t offer his hand, perhaps because he had recalled that Horton’s were bandaged, though judging by the man’s expression Horton guessed it was a hostile body-language gesture.

‘What is it now?’ Gilmore boomed in exasperation.

‘You wanted to be the first to know the results of your brother’s post-mortem, but if you’d rather wait . . .’ Horton turned away, knowing that Gilmore would have to capitulate.

He was far too impatient to be left hanging on.

‘I didn’t realize you’d have them so quickly.’

Horton turned back, registering Sebastian Gilmore’s surprise. And was that relief he also witnessed before Gilmore scowled? The giant didn’t seem quite as self-assured as he had done yesterday. Was this because they were seeing him in his home, or had he suspected them on some other mission?

‘The post-mortem on your brother has revealed very little—’

‘His death wasn’t suspicious then.’ Gilmore seemed to cling to the idea like a limpet to a mine.

Horton was sure there was relief in those steely eyes, but maybe he just imagined it. ‘We’re not yet certain—’

‘I don’t—’

‘There appears to be no obvious reason why he died,’ interrupted Horton forcefully. ‘In fact he seemed remarkably healthy, which in itself makes us wonder. That, coupled with Tom Brundall’s death, makes us suspicious.’

‘But people do suddenly die. Sudden-death syndrome or some such thing. Perhaps it happened to Rowley.’

‘That still leaves us with Tom Brundall’s death.’ Horton wasn’t going to mention Dr Clayton’s suspicions about poisoning.

Gilmore began to pace the room, frowning. Suddenly he swung round. ‘A fire on board a boat can be an accident.’

‘Yes, and being a boat owner you’d know that.’ Horton had the satisfaction of seeing Gilmore surprised.

‘You’ve been checking up on me.’ He glared at Horton.

‘As Mr Brundall’s death occurred in Horsea Marina, we need to check on all the boat owners there,’ Horton answered smoothly. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you kept a boat there?’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘How long have you owned it?’

‘I bought it at last year’s boat show. Now if there are no further—’

‘Ever been across to Guernsey in it?’

‘Yes, and to Jersey and France,’ Gilmore snapped. ‘But what has that got to do with my brother’s death?’

‘How long does it take you to get to Guernsey?’

‘Look, what the devil is all this about?’

‘Must be a couple of hours in the right conditions with those powerful engines. Where do you stay in Guernsey?’

‘I don’t know what the hell you’re driving at, but if you must know I stay in Albert Marina, St Peter Port.’

Cantelli said, ‘Did you ever see Tom Brundall there? It’s where he kept his boat.’

‘So that’s it? I wish you’d just come out and ask the bloody questions instead of acting all bloody Sherlock Holmes about it. I told you I haven’t seen Tom from the day he walked off the boats.’

Cantelli said, ‘Are you married, sir?’

Gilmore glowered at Cantelli. ‘What the hell has that to do with Rowley’s death?’ he thundered.

Horton wasn’t quite sure either, but Cantelli must have had his reasons for asking the question – he always did. Perhaps he thought Sebastian had murdered his wife and put her in Rowland’s air-raid shelter.

Gilmore said, stiffly, ‘My wife died twenty-seven years ago.

Now if you’ve finished—’

‘How long were you married?’

Gilmore stared at Cantelli as if the village idiot had just confronted him. ‘Does this have any significance?’ he roared.

Cantelli shrugged and smiled as if a simpleton. Horton knew the sergeant’s tricks of old. This one never failed to get a reaction. He was curious to see which way Gilmore would leap: patronizingly superior and humour the idiot copper or blustering angry and demand explanations. Gilmore went for the former.

‘If you really must know, Sergeant,’ he said with some hauteur. ‘We were married in 1974 and my wife died in 1981, a year after Selina was born.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir.’ Cantelli shook his head as his pencil laboured over his notebook. Horton saw the anger on Gilmore’s face turn to puzzlement and then wariness.

He said, ‘You took your boat out of Horsea Marina on Tuesday. Where did you go?’

Gilmore swung round to face Horton. Quickly recovering his composure from Cantelli’s unexpected questions, he said,

‘If I’d known you were going to interrogate me, I’d have called my solicitor.’

‘Interrogate? I’m sorry if you got that impression, Mr Gilmore. We just need to place everyone who knew Mr Brundall before and around the time of his death. Where did you go?’ Horton insisted.

Gilmore hesitated. Was he trying to think up a lie, Horton wondered, or tossing up whether to tell them to go to hell?

Finally Gilmore said, ‘To Cowes on the Isle of Wight. I have an apartment there with a berth and I wanted to give the boat a run. I came back the following morning.’

That fitted with what Uckfield had told him. ‘Was anyone with you, sir?’

‘Look, what is this? You think I had something to do with Brundall’s death? Then bloody say so. I was on my own, satisfied?’

It would take a lot more checking to satisfy him. Evenly, he said, ‘And where were you on Wednesday evening, sir?’

‘You can’t honestly believe that I had anything to do with Brundall’s death? This is bloody ridiculous. I’m going to make a complaint about this. You burst in here and question me like a common criminal.’

Horton contrived to look contrite. ‘I’m sorry, sir. Would you rather answer the questions at the station?’

‘No, I bloody wouldn’t. If you must know, and seeing as it’s obvious I am not going to get rid of you, or your ridiculous allegations, until I answer your questions, I drove to my office from my boat, OK?’ Gilmore glared at Horton. Horton said nothing, forcing Gilmore to continue. ‘I collected Selina and we went to a sales meeting with Tri Fare, the supermarket chain at their head office in Bristol. I didn’t get back here until gone ten; there was an accident on the M4.’

‘Would anyone else have access to your boat?’

‘My daughter,’ Gilmore sniped. ‘But seeing as she was with me at Tri Fare, she didn’t. Just what the fuck are you driving at?’

It was good, Horton thought, very good, but it didn’t convince him. Behind those granite eyes he saw fear. He smelt wariness and concern. Gilmore knew something about Brundall’s death, all right; Horton would stake his career on it.

‘And your movements on Friday night between six o’clock and seven forty-five?’ Now let’s see what the bugger produces out of the hat for the time of Anne Schofield’s death and his close encounter with eternity.

Gilmore picked up a weight. Horton could see his fist curling round it, the knuckles whitening. Here was a man desperately holding on to his temper, or was it his tongue? Did he want to explain why he had killed Anne Schofield and tried to kill him, or was Horton simply imagining it? He held Gilmore’s strong intimidating stare and kept silent. He knew Gilmore was the type who hated silence and hesitation.

‘I was in my office,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Alone?’

‘Yes. Now if that is all . . .’ Gilmore crossed to the door and threw it open.

But Horton, in true policeman fashion, said, ‘There is just one more thing you can help us with.’

Gilmore tightened his grip on the weight. Horton continued,

‘Did you ever visit the vicarage, your brother’s house?’

‘I’ve already told you, I saw him twelve years ago and that was it,’ Sebastian Gilmore boomed with exasperation.

‘Then you have no idea who the skeleton in your brother’s garden is, or how it might have got there?’

‘You what? You’re kidding?’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘You’re not, are you? I haven’t the faintest idea.’

Horton studied the giant of a man. His face was immobile, but his body was so tense that Horton thought you could run a truck through it and not crumple it.

‘Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Gilmore. I realize how difficult a time this must be for you. We’ll do all we can to find out what happened to your brother.’

Gilmore swept ahead of them and flung open the door.

Horton could hear a dog barking furiously. Silent, Gilmore showed them out and firmly shut the door behind them.

It was raining but Horton took his time walking to the car and opening the door. Taking his cue, Cantelli did the same, saying, ‘Gilmore’s not very comfortable about something.

Thought he was going to bash us over the head with that ruddy weight.’

Horton looked at the house. There were two long sash windows to the right of the main door. From one of them he could see Gilmore watching them. He climbed into the car.

‘Gilmore knew that Brundall lived in Guernsey. And I reckon he met him there. Take your time starting the car, Barney, and turning it around.’

‘We’re being watched?’

‘You bet we are.’

Cantelli obliged, making out like a learner driver. Gilmore was probably having palpitations in case he hit the Porsche.

Horton said, ‘Why didn’t Gilmore show more interest in the skeleton? Most people would have asked questions like, how did it get there? How long had it been there? Who is it?

Even a denial like, “You don’t think my brother has anything to do with that?” But nothing, it was as if everyone has a skeleton at the bottom of their garden.’

‘Yeah, and he’s probably got one in the closet. Is this slow enough?’

‘Perfect. Any slower and you’ll be going backwards.

Gilmore’s worried. I want his alibi for both Wednesday night and Friday night thoroughly checked.’

The gates swung open, and Cantelli stopped for a moment on the other side of them, just for effect. Horton called Sergeant Elkins of the marine unit and relayed what Gilmore had said about being in Cowes Marina on Tuesday night.

‘Find out if he’s telling the truth, Elkins, and if so what time he arrived and when he left. Was he with anyone? Did he meet anyone there and if so who. Get as much information as you can. He claims he has an apartment at Cowes with a berth. Sniff around, see what you can dig up on him.’

Horton rang off, and said to Cantelli, ‘What was all that stuff about a wife?’

‘I just wondered if she could have been our skeleton in the garden. But the timing is wrong if Mr Gutner is correct about the bones not being there in 1995.’

‘There was something else you were fishing for,’ Horton said. ‘I can always tell by that gleam in your watery old eyes.’

‘Hey, not so much of the old.’ Cantelli smiled. ‘My dad also told me about Sebastian Gilmore’s girlfriend . . .’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Patience. She was a real stunner by all accounts. Dad didn’t say anything about her dying though.’

‘Why should he? He probably doesn’t remember.’

‘What! My dad! He’s like an elephant. He never forgets, especially when it comes to women. It was odd because when Dad was describing her she sounded a lot like Rowland Gilmore’s wife.’

Horton threw Cantelli a look. ‘Now that is interesting. You got that photograph of Teresa Gilmore on you?’

‘Of course.’

Horton smiled. ‘Then I think it’s about time we paid your dad a visit.’

‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

Fifteen

Toni Cantelli Senior was propped up in bed with suction pads and monitors attached to his narrow, grey-haired chest, and bleeping machinery surrounding him in the hot house of the high dependency unit. With his fine grey hair, lean face and very dark quick eyes he reminded Horton of a little old monkey. He seemed to perk up when they walked in. The nurse said they could have ten minutes, but no more.