All Quiet on Arrival (21 page)

‘He's disappeared, Mrs Horton,' I said. ‘I've had enquiries made by the Australian Federal Police, but he's not been seen for over a month.'

‘D'you have any idea where he was working, Chief Inspector?' asked Horton. ‘I think I told you that he was a mining engineer.'

‘He wasn't,' said Kate. ‘He ran a bar in Blair, a small township in the Northern Territory, not far from Darwin.'

‘But that's not possible,' said Horton. ‘He told me he was a mining engineer.'

‘I'm afraid he lied to you,' said Kate. ‘Our information is that he worked as a labourer in a bauxite mine at Gove Peninsula which is about three hundred and seventy miles from Darwin. But he wasn't there very long. Presumably that's where he made enough money to open his bar in Blair.'

‘I'm finding this all very hard to believe,' said Horton. The initial arrogance had dissipated, but might have been a ploy to cover guilty knowledge.

‘When did you last see your son, Mr Horton?' I still wondered if Gregory had had anything to do with Metcalfe's murder.

‘When he went to Australia about seven years ago. I think I told you that it was just after my divorce from Diana.'

‘And you've not seen him since?'

‘No. Nor have I heard from him. Why d'you think I might've done?'

‘We have reason to believe that your son might be in this country, Mr Horton,' said Kate.

‘Are you from the Australian police, Inspector?' asked Faye, at last picking up on Kate's accent.

‘No, I'm a Metropolitan Police officer attached to New Scotland Yard,' said Kate.

‘Oh, I wondered, considering you're so very interested in Maurice's son,' said Faye Horton, and lapsed into silence again.

‘If you should hear from your son, perhaps you'd let us know, Mr Horton,' I said.

‘D'you think he's somehow connected to these dreadful murders?'

‘We shan't know until we talk to him, but I find it rather curious that he should have disappeared from his bar in Blair a short time before Mrs Barton was murdered.'

‘But you said that you knew who murdered her.' Horton gave a wonderful impression of being utterly confused by the whole business. ‘A man called Metcalfe, I think you said.'

‘Yes, but we don't know who murdered Metcalfe,' said Kate.

‘And you suspect my son?' Horton sounded appalled at the very idea.

‘You said it, not me, Mr Horton,' said Kate. ‘Do you think he's capable of murder? After all, the outcome of the murders of Diana and James Barton is that Gregory Horton is richer by eighteen million pounds.'

I wasn't sure if planting that seed in Horton's mind was a good idea. If Gregory Horton did contact his father, it would be a father's instinct to protect and warn his only son that the police were looking for him.

‘D'you think that something might've happened to Gregory?' asked Horton. ‘You say he's disappeared, but could he be dead? You hear such awful stories about people being lost in the outback, I think you Australians call it, and never being found again.'

Kate smiled. ‘I've no idea,' she said. ‘But it's a possibility.'

‘What would happen to all that money if Maurice's son
is
dead?' asked Faye Horton, her mind still on the fortune that, in her mind, should have gone to her husband.

‘I imagine it would pass to his Australian wife Elizabeth, known as Beth,' said Kate, a statement that afforded Faye Horton no comfort whatever. ‘That's assuming they're still together, of course,' she added. ‘We've heard that she was working as a prostitute at one time.' That was gilding the lily somewhat, but I imagine that Kate had said it to annoy the Hortons. And it certainly ruffled Faye's feathers.

‘Good God!' she said. ‘Surely not.'

Kate and I stood up to leave. ‘If Gregory does get in touch, Mr Horton, be sure to let me know,' I said again, and handed him one of my cards. But I had no great hope that he would. The outcome would probably be that Gregory Horton would disappear into that great metropolis called London. I knew from experience that if that happened, it would be difficult, but not impossible, to find him.

I
t was on the Friday morning that a surprise call was received in the incident room.

‘I've just had a man named Bernard Graves on the phone, sir.' Colin Wilberforce came into my office holding a message form. Dave Poole followed him. ‘He said he's been abroad on holiday, but has had all his newspapers held for him by his newsagent,' explained Wilberforce. ‘Apparently he's a freelance journalist and likes to keep up to date with everything that's going on in the world.'

‘That's all very interesting, Colin, but why's he got in touch with us?'

‘He said he was at Diana Barton's party at Tavona Street the night she was murdered, sir, but he'd only just read our news release.'

‘It's a racing certainty that that's the Bernie we've been looking for, guv,' said Dave. ‘The guy who Gaston Potier reckoned was at the party with a bird called Samantha.'

‘What's Graves's address, Colin?' I asked.

‘Seventeen Coxbridge Road, Golders Green, sir.'

‘Is he there now?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Right, Dave, let's go to Golders Green.'

Dave waggled a set of car keys. ‘Raring to go, guv.'

Bernard Graves was about fifty but looked older, which accorded with the description of him that Liz Edwards had given us. I can only assume that the life of a journalist had taken its toll in late nights, loose women and alcohol. He was almost completely bald, and overweight. He wore an old shirt, and a pair of ragged shorts that looked as though they'd been cut down from full-length jeans. On his feet was a pair of plastic beach thongs.

‘Mr Graves, we're police officers,' I said, and introduced Dave and myself.

‘I take it you're here about Diana's murder,' said Graves, peering at us through a pair of thick horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘I telephoned this morning. Come in.' He led us into a comfortably furnished sitting room. On a purpose-built unit in one corner was a computer. A nearby table bore piles of newspapers and magazines next to which was a combined telephone and fax machine. On the adjacent wall to the right of the computer was a small whiteboard on which were scrawled hieroglyphics that I took to be Graves's personal shorthand notes. A framed copy of a tabloid newspaper's front page hung on another wall. The headline read:
soap star in bubble bath frolic with married footballer
. The by-line read Bernard Graves.

‘I gather you're a journalist,' I said, although Colin Wilberforce had told me he was.

‘That's me,' said Graves, seeing that I'd spotted his frivolous exposé. ‘But I'm freelance now, and I do quite a lot of work abroad. As a matter of fact, I'm not long back from Iraq, which was not a happy experience. All of which explains why I'm not married. Not any more. Have yourselves a seat, gents.'

‘You've been on holiday, you told my officer in your phone call, Mr Graves,' I said.

‘Yes, I treated myself to a couple of weeks in the South of France to see how the other half lives. Mind you, I combined business with pleasure. I managed to pick up a few juicy pieces about the rich and famous cavorting on the beaches – and in the bedrooms – of Cannes. That way I'm able to charge part of the cost of the holiday against tax. Now, what can I help you with?'

‘You said in your phone call that you were at Diana Barton's house in Tavona Street on the night she was killed.'

‘Yes, but I understood from press reports at the time that she'd died as a result of the fire. But now I see from your news release that it's being treated as a murder enquiry.'

‘That's so,' I said. ‘She was stabbed several times in what you press chaps would doubtless describe as a frenzied attack.'

‘God, what an awful way to die. Any idea who killed her?'

‘Yes, but it's not for publication.'

Graves held up his hands in an attitude of supplication. ‘I do have
some
moral principles, Chief Inspector, even though I'm a hack,' he said.

‘We're fairly sure that her murderer was a man called Bruce Metcalfe who's since been found murdered himself. But that hasn't been released to the press either.'

‘Well, Metcalfe's death was no bloody loss,' said Graves. ‘D'you know who killed him?'

‘Not yet. From what you say, I assume that you came across Metcalfe at Mrs Barton's party.'

‘Yes, I did. He was an Australian. Nasty piece of work. It's a sure thing that he was on drugs, and I do know a pothead when I see one, believe me.'

‘One of the witnesses suggested that you came to the party with a girl called Samantha. A girl in her middle to late twenties.'

‘I wish,' said Graves with a lascivious grin. ‘I don't think a broken down scribe like me would have stood a chance with her.' He lit another cigarette from his existing one, and stubbed out the old one in an ashtray that bore the word Belga and a small picture of a girl in a 1920s hat.

‘Did you talk to her?' asked Dave.

‘Exchanged a few words, but she'd come with this Bruce bloke, the Aussie guy you mentioned.'

That was interesting, and contrary to the information we'd received from Potier and others, all of who had expressed the view that Metcalfe had arrived alone. ‘Did she tell you anything about herself?' I asked.

‘No. She struck me as a bit of an airhead. Nice body, and probably good in bed. But she'd have failed in the intelligent conversation stakes. She was Australian as well.'

I don't know why Dave did what he did next, but I was pleased that he did. He produced a copy of the photograph that the Australian Federal Police had seized from Gregory Horton's bar in Blair.

‘Do you recognize the woman in this photograph, Mr Graves?'

‘Yes, that's Samantha, without a doubt. Where was that taken?'

‘A place called Blair, a few miles from Darwin in the Northern Territory. She and her husband ran a bar there, and her name is Elizabeth Horton.'

‘That Bruce guy wasn't her husband, then. At least, that's not him in the picture.'

‘No, he wasn't. Did she mention her husband?'

‘Not to me she didn't. I got the impression she was free and easy. Well, certainly the latter. I wonder why she called herself Samantha.'

‘Did you notice what perfume she was wearing, Mr Graves?' asked Dave.

Graves laughed. ‘You must be joking,' he said. ‘I can't tell one scent from another, but she was wearing something. I mean perfume; she wasn't wearing much else.'

So there we had it. Bruce Metcalfe had brought Beth Horton with him to Diana Barton's party, and she had called herself Samantha. But that posed another question: why was she there, and where was Gregory Horton? And, for that matter, where were she and her husband now?

‘Did she say how long she'd been in England?' I asked.

‘No, she didn't say much at all. I think she took one look at me, and decided that a fat fifty-two-year-old balding divorcé was too far over the hill for her to bother with. She wandered off, and started chatting to someone else.'

‘How did you come to know Diana Barton, Mr Graves?' asked Dave.

‘We're old friends. As a matter of fact, I met her about five or six years ago in the South of France. I was working for a national at the time, and I was down there to cover some scandal about a Z-list actor having a fling with a German model who was not his wife. The usual sort of muckraking that we journalists indulge in,' Graves added with a self-deprecating laugh. ‘The hoot of it all was that the German model turned out to be a guy who was in the process of changing his sex. That must've dampened our soap star's ardour.'

‘When you say that that's where you met Diana, how did it come about?' Dave wanted to get to the bottom of this friendship, even though it was probably of less value to our enquiries than it was to his prurient interest.

‘We met in a cafe on the front at Cannes. I was enjoying my usual mid-morning brandy, and watching the passing scene. But I noticed her straight away; she was a damned attractive woman dressed in shorts and a bra top. She was having a coffee at the next table, all by herself. She asked me for a light, and we got talking. She told me that she was with her husband, but he was an old guy apparently, and not much fun to be with on holiday. Mind you, I got the impression that he wasn't much fun to be with at any time. She explained that he was something to do with the hotel business, and spent most of his day working, even on holiday. “Some holiday this has turned out to be!” was how she described it. But I know what you're working up to. Yes, we had an affair.' Graves crossed to his workstation, and opened a drawer. After spending a few minutes riffling through its contents, he produced a photograph and handed it to me. ‘There, that's her. She was a good swimmer, that girl.'

The photograph showed a woman, who was undoubtedly Diana Barton, attired in a one-piece black swimsuit sitting on a sandy beach with a towel round her shoulders, and smiling at the camera.

‘She was staying at the Carlton, of course. Only the best for her,' Graves continued, ‘but even so she didn't mind sharing my bed at the crummy two-star I was staying in at the other end of the rue du Canada.'

‘And I presume this affair continued after you both got back here,' I suggested.

‘Yes.' Graves smiled. ‘On and off.'

I handed Graves one of my cards. ‘If you should happen to run into Beth Horton alias Samantha again, Mr Graves,' I said, ‘perhaps you'd give me a ring.'

‘Sure,' said Graves, tucking the card into the pocket of his shorts. ‘Is there a story in it?'

‘Maybe,' I said, ‘but let me know first.' I'd come across journalists before who'd tried to get a story out of a suspect before notifying the police. The worst offender of my acquaintance was known as Fat Danny, crime reporter of the worst tabloid in Fleet Street. Press intervention didn't help.