Suffocating Sea (25 page)

The lift slid open and he stepped out, surprised to find his heart racing. His feet propelled him forward until he was standing outside his old front door. In his mind he could see his bedroom plastered with posters of football heroes, and his schoolbooks piled on the small chest of drawers under the window. He used to lean out and watch the ships, sailing boats, and hovercraft cross the Solent to the Isle of Wight beyond. Had he been unhappy? He couldn’t remember, but now he recalled that the sailing boats had made him think of freedom, escape, and adventure, so maybe he had been.

Bugger. He closed his eyes and instantly saw his mother’s laughing face, her blonde hair tumbling down her shoulders.

He could feel the texture of her dress, smell her soft musky perfume, and hear her light laughing voice . . .

‘
I’m going out, Andy. You get yourself off to bed at nine. If
I come home and find you in front of that telly I’ll tan your
hide and there’ll be no football practice for you, my boy.
’

‘
Where are you going, Mum?
’

‘
Where do you think? Work, of course.
’

He turned away feeling a heavy sadness within him and almost collided with an elderly woman pulling a shopping trolley. Hastily, he apologized as her lined faced looked alarmed and concerned. Strangers here meant trouble and he guessed one wearing a black leather jacket emblazoned with the Harley Davidson logo was even more suspect.

‘It’s OK, luv. I’m from the police.’ He showed her his warrant card and she visibly relaxed.

‘You can’t be too sure these days. We get some funny types round here.’

‘How long have you lived here, Mrs—?’

‘Cobden. Thirty-two years.’

My God, she must have been his neighbour! He had been ten when he had left here; she would have been what – late forties, or early fifties? He couldn’t recall her, and clearly she didn’t remember him, or recognize the name on his warrant card, though he had only flashed it at her, but she might remember his mother. With a racing heart he said, ‘I’m trying to trace a woman who used to live here thirty years ago. Fair, nice-looking with a little boy . . .’

‘You mean Jennifer Horton.’

‘Yes!’ For once he was unable to hide his surprise and there he had been telling PC Johns not to jump to conclusions. It felt strange to hear her name, and uttered so normally. It made her come alive for him; he could almost see her here in this corridor, gossiping to the old woman, and this time he recognized that his feelings of anger and hatred towards her weren’t as strong as before. ‘I didn’t expect you to remember so quickly.’

‘She walked out on her little boy, the poor little mite, and he stayed in there – ’ she jerked her head at the door – ‘waiting for his mother to come home. I had no idea. It broke my heart when the social carted the poor little blighter away.’

Horton ignored the tightening in his stomach muscles. ‘Do you know what happened to her?’

‘How a mother can up and leave her own child like that I don’t know, but there were rumours.’

‘What kind?’ Horton steeled himself to hear the worst, hoping that his police training would stand him in good stead and he wouldn’t betray his turmoil.

She inserted her key in the lock, and looked around as though afraid someone might overhear. Horton thought it would have been comical if it hadn’t concerned him. In a low whisper she said, ‘Men.’

‘Any in particular?’ he asked as casually as he could, though even to him his voice sounded strained. His mind went back to the Town Camber and the dark-haired man with the sharp-featured face. He wished he could recall more of him, but all he got was an impression of vitality and strength, and a sense of evil. But then that was probably his ten-year-old brain kicking in. If Rowland Gilmore had shown up wearing a dog collar he’d probably have felt the same way. He hadn’t wanted anyone to steal his mother’s affections from him.

The old woman peered at him warily, and for a moment Horton wondered if she had recognized him.

She said, ‘Why are you interested after all these years? Is she dead?’ Then her expression cleared. ‘It’s one of them cold cases, isn’t it? Like you see on the telly. You think she’s been murdered!’ she cried triumphantly, with a gleam in her eyes.

‘Do you think that’s likely?’ he asked, outwardly calm, but feeling excited and anxious inside.

She thought for a moment. ‘It didn’t cross my mind at the time. I just thought she didn’t want to be tied down with a kid. She liked a good time. She was young. But maybe you’re right. Up until she ran off, she’d been a good mother. The boy was always clean and well fed, and he seemed a happy little soul.’

Her words were like darts stabbing his heart. He had tried not to think of his childhood for so long that it was a shock to remember that there had been times when he’d been happy.

The misery of his childhood after the age of ten had obliterated the good times.

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

She puckered her face in thought for a moment, then said,

‘It was her birthday. I bumped into her as I was coming out of the lift and she was going down. I said, “Where are you going all dressed up to the nines?” She tapped the side of her nose, smiled and said, “Ask no questions and you’ll get no lies.” I never saw her again.’

So who had she been going to meet? If he knew that, he’d know her killer, because now he was convinced she was dead.

And he wouldn’t mind betting that Sebastian Gilmore was involved in it somewhere along the line.

There was nothing more the old lady could tell him. He thanked her for her help, and left, not leaving a card with his name on it and betraying who he was. Give it a couple of days, though, and he’d return. She might have remembered something more by then, or she might know someone who had. He also hoped to have those missing-person case notes.

He headed for Southampton, mulling over what the old lady had told him. She was right when she said his mother had liked men because Horton certainly remembered more than one man. But why shouldn’t she have boyfriends? She had been young, pretty and single. Again he wondered who his father was; he couldn’t recall his mother ever speaking of him.

Had he just been a casual acquaintance, a five-minute grope in the back of a van somewhere? Or had it been a serious love affair? Horton liked to think the latter.

He pulled up in front of the Marine Accident Investigation Branch in Southampton, shelving thoughts of his mother, and turned his mind to the case of the rescued yachtsman.

Although the MAIB had only come into being in 1989 it had inherited the reports from the Marine Directorate and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Horton knew that he would find some record of the marine tragedy that had claimed Warwick Hassingham’s life.

The librarian, a slender fair woman in her late thirties with a weatherworn face and bright eyes, handed across a file.

‘We haven’t got all our records on to computer yet, so I’m afraid it’s a case of ploughing through the paperwork. There’s a summary sheet at the front. I’ll leave you to it.’

Horton settled down to read.

It was Friday 15 August 1997 and the storm came up out of nowhere. Gilmore didn’t have Global Satellite Positioning on the fishing boat but relied on experience and the light-house at St Catherine’s to get his bearings. Just before midnight the Solent Coastguard received a Mayday from the motorboat,
Haven
, reporting that the engine had failed, and the helmsman was disorientated and had no idea where he was.

The rescue helicopter was scrambled and the Bembridge lifeboat alerted, but the Mayday call was also answered by the fishing vessel,
Frances May
. Skippered by Sebastian Gilmore, she was the first to reach the
Haven,
which was shipping water fast. They threw a line to the helmsman. Then, against Sebastian Gilmore’s advice and instructions to wait for the rescue helicopter, Warwick Hassingham leaned over the side of the fishing boat to try and reach the man. He wasn’t clipped on, a wave struck the
Frances May
and Hassingham was swept overboard. The crew of the fishing vessel threw another line to Warwick and pulled the injured man from the
Haven
on board, but Warwick Hassingham had gone. The helicopter mounted a full search and rescue operation, but there was no sign of Hassingham or the
Haven
, which was believed to have sunk. The rescued man was called Peter Croxton. He lived in Guildford.

Horton sat back. He had a name. Good. Did Croxton still live at the address in Guildford? If Horton was correct in his theory about drug smuggling and this man being the supplier, then he doubted it. There would be a coroner’s report on Hassingham though and outside, Horton rang through to Sergeant Trueman and asked him to request a copy of it, and to trace Peter Croxton. On his way back to the station, he detoured to Dr Clayton to see if she had made anything of the bones they had recovered from the air-raid shelter.

‘I was about to call you, Inspector,’ she said, as he knocked and walked into her office. ‘Come and take a look at him.’

‘It’s male then.’ Horton followed her diminutive figure into the mortuary where the few bones Taylor had gathered up were laid out upon a slab. He nodded at Tom, who was whistling ‘I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair’.

‘Yes. We were lucky to have the pelvis; it’s thicker and heavier than the female pelvis. The body of the pubis is trian-gular in shape, whereas in a female it would be quadrangle and the sacrum is long and narrow and not short and wide, like this.’ She pointed to the various bones as she spoke. ‘And if that wasn’t enough to confirm the sex of the skeleton then we have the skull.’

Horton stared at the bones, wondering how this poor devil had ended up in that air-raid shelter.

‘He was also Caucasian. As to his height, the length of the femur puts him at five feet eleven inches.’

How tall was Peter Croxton? Could this be him?

‘With regards to the length of time he’s been dead, you’re certainly looking at more than five years because there are no tags of soft tissue present. I’ll do some laboratory tests to give you a clearer indication of date but from what I can see, and the condition of his teeth and fillings, I’d say between five to ten years.’

Which matched what Gutner had told them – give or take a few years. If this was Croxton and Horton’s theory about him being a drug supplier was correct, then maybe Croxton had decided he wanted out. Sebastian Gilmore couldn’t allow that so had killed him. Sebastian knew his brother was back living in Portsmouth, he’d seen him on the quayside, and had come up with the idea of dumping his body in his brother’s backyard knowing that Rowland suffered from claustrophobia and wouldn’t venture inside the air-raid shelter. And if he ever did and found the body, then Rowland would keep quiet rather than risk losing his job.

‘Any idea of his age?’

‘From the pattern of the fusion of bone ends I would say he was about mid to late thirties when he died.’

Horton was disappointed. If he’d been killed in 1995, after Gutner had looked in the air-raid shelter, and if it were Peter Croxton, then that would make him about seventeen or eighteen at the time of the tragedy at sea. It was a bit on the young side to be involved in a complex drug smuggling operation as he had theorized, and who would have hired a motorboat to such a young man in 1977? It was still possible but it was looking more doubtful. There had been no age mentioned on the incident report. Sebastian might be able to give him some idea of the age of the rescued man, but would he tell the truth?

Gaye continued, ‘I’ve taken pictures of the jaw and teeth and DNA survives in the bones for many years so we’ll be able to compare this with family members for closer identification.’

‘If we can find any relatives. Do you know how he died?’

‘Now that’s where we are lucky.’ Gaye turned over the skull.

‘See here.’ She pointed to a large indentation and handed Horton a magnifier. ‘Tell me what you see.’

Horton peered closely at the cranium. ‘There’s a long thin crack running from the dent.’ He looked up. ‘Someone hit him?’

‘I would say so.’

‘I suppose it’s impossible for you to say if he was killed then moved.’

‘Sorry.’

‘So we’re looking for a missing person, male, mid to late thirties, five feet eleven inches tall, Caucasian, who was reported missing any time from 1998 to about 2003.’

‘That’s about it.
If
he was reported missing. Perhaps nobody noticed.’

Her words made him think of his mother. Someone had noticed but how hard had anyone tried to find her?

Gaye said, ‘The skull can be scanned into computer and

“fleshed” out to give you likely facial appearance. I’m getting on to that now, but we have no indication of his eye or hair colour. And the lip shape and size are also independent of the bony structure. It’s a start, though. I’ll let you have the lab results as soon as possible.’

Horton didn’t like to think how many men in their mid thirties were listed as missing between 1998 and 2003 but they’d check anyway. He told her about Cantelli’s father. She shook her head sadly.

‘Would you let me know when the funeral is?’ she said.

‘Of course.’ He was surprised that she thought about going but also pleased that he would see her there.

On arriving at the station he made straight for the incident room where DC Marsden announced that Sebastian Gilmore’s alibi for the night Rowland Gilmore and Tom Brundall had died had been confirmed. He had been at Tri Fare. Horton cursed. But he didn’t give up all hope of pinning the murders on him. Like he had said to Uckfield, Gilmore could have hired someone to do his killing.

Horton could see Dennings in his office next to Uckfield’s with his phone clamped to his ear. Uckfield wasn’t around.

Horton pulled up a chair and spent some time scrutinizing the coroner’s report on Teresa Gilmore’s death. It confirmed what they already knew. Her clothes were found at the foot of the cliffs on the beach at Rhossili Bay on the Gower Peninsula in Wales, along with a note addressed to her husband.