All Quiet on Arrival (26 page)

‘Are you prepared to make a statement implicating your husband, Mrs Horton?' I asked.

‘No, I'm not,' said Faye spiritedly. ‘I've no intention of doing your dirty work for you.'

And that, I'm afraid, was that. The verbal statement of one accused against another is of little use if it's likely that they'd conspired. And even if it were, there are all manner of checks and enquiries to be undertaken before it can successfully be adduced at a trial.

Faye Horton had made it clear that she was going to take the full blame. I hoped her husband would appreciate it. But perhaps Faye thought she'd get away with a slap on the wrist.

Once Faye Horton had been charged with assisting an offender, I rang Dave's mobile.

‘What's happening, Dave?' I asked.

‘Nothing, guv.' Dave sounded fed up. ‘There's no sign of her. What d'you want me to do?'

‘You'll have to hang on until I can get a relief sent up there, Dave. I'll get it organized as soon as possible.'

I rang Gavin Creasey in the incident room, and asked him to get hold of DI Len Driscoll. Driscoll was another of my inspectors, but one who was not involved in my current enquiry.

After a short pause, Driscoll came on the line.

‘What's the problem, guv?' he asked.

I explained, as succinctly as I could, the story so far. ‘Get a couple of DCs up there, Len, to keep obo on Beth Horton's apartment. If she returns, I want to hear about it immediately. If she doesn't show, I'll have your two relieved first thing in the morning.'

‘Right, guv,' said Driscoll. ‘That'll make a couple of my blokes very happy.'

But Beth Horton didn't return to her apartment that night. Len Driscoll's two DCs spent an unpleasant twelve hours sitting in a car in Clarges Street trying not to look too obvious.

At eight o'clock the next morning, Saturday, Dave telephoned me to say that he and DCs Chance and Armitage had taken over from Driscoll's officers, and resumed the observation.

‘But she still hasn't shown up, guv,' he said.

A quarter of an hour later, Dave rang again.

‘She's just arrived, guv. There's no doubt it's her. She's definitely the bird in the photograph that Mr Granger got for us; the one that was in Greg's Bar in Blair. She got out of a taxi about ten minutes ago, looking as though she'd spent the night on the tiles.'

‘Don't do anything until I get there, Dave. I want to be in at the kill.' I got hold of John Appleby and told him to organize a car.

My car drew up some distance from the flat where Beth Horton lived. Dave Poole and Sheila Armitage appeared as if from nowhere.

‘She's still in there, guv,' said Dave.

‘And you're sure it's Beth Horton.'

‘No doubt about it in my mind, guv.'

‘OK, here we go,' I said to Dave. ‘You come too, Sheila.'

I told Sheila to knock on the door while Dave, Nicola Chance and I stayed out of sight.

The door to the flat opened, and Sheila said, ‘Good morning, Mrs Horton. May I come in?'

Before Beth had time to refuse, or even to reply, Dave, Nicola and I were in the flat together with Sheila.

‘Who the hell are you, and what's this all about?' protested Beth in a strong Australian accent.

‘We are police officers,' I said. ‘Are you Elizabeth Horton?'

‘No, I'm Samantha Crisp,' said the girl.

‘And you're Australian.'

‘Is that against the law, then?' she asked sarcastically.

‘In that case, I need to see your passport.'

‘Why?'

‘To satisfy myself that you're not in the country illegally,' I said.

‘I've lost it.'

‘No she hasn't,' said Sheila Armitage, who had already begun a cursory search of the apartment. She handed me the document.

‘It says here that you are Elizabeth Horton, née McDonald. And the photograph is undoubtedly of you.'

‘What if I am?' demanded Beth Horton churlishly.

‘Elizabeth Horton, I'm arresting you under the provisions of the Fugitive Offenders Act pending the arrival of a warrant issued at Darwin in the Northern Territory,' I said. ‘If you are returned to Australia, you will be charged with the murder of your husband Gregory Horton sometime prior to the fifteenth of this month.' And I cautioned her.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' said Beth Horton. ‘My husband was alive when I left Australia.'

‘We've arrested Faye Horton,' I said quietly, but got no reaction from Beth Horton.

Sheila tapped me on the arm. ‘We've found a credit card in the name of Samantha Crisp, sir, and quite a lot of corres.'

‘Thanks, Sheila. You know the drill.'

Sheila started to bag and label the seizures while Dave spoke to Beth Horton.

‘You heard what Mr Brock said about our having arrested Faye Norton,' Dave said, ‘and she told him how she assisted you to get a credit card.'

‘Did she tell you what she was going to get out of it?'

‘What was that?'

‘Money, mate. What else?'

‘We'll take Mrs Horton to Charing Cross, Sheila,' I said. ‘But I want you to stay here pending the arrival of Linda Mitchell and her team.'

‘Right, sir.' Sheila pointed to an object in a drawer she'd just opened. ‘Is this what we're looking for, sir?' she asked, indicating a humane killer.

‘Probably,' I said cautiously. I studied the device without touching it. It was almost certainly the murder weapon. ‘Leave it in situ and point it out to Linda as soon as she gets here.'

Rather than convey Beth Horton to the police station in his car, Dave had summoned a custody van to take her to Charing Cross police station.

Once at the nick, I told Dave and Nicola Chance to go back to Curtis Green, and to send Kate Ebdon here.

Given that Kate was also an Australian, she was the obvious choice to join me in the interview room, and we started at half past nine.

Kate moved a little closer to Beth. ‘That's a Jo Malone perfume you're wearing, isn't it?'

‘Yes.' Beth looked as though she wondered why Kate had posed that question, but Kate knew it was one of the Jo Malone range of perfumes that Linda Mitchell had detected when Bruce Metcalfe's room at Talleyrand Street was searched.

I decided not to risk questioning Beth Horton about Bruce Metcalfe's murder, even though I was confident that his DNA would be on the humane killer that Sheila had found at the Clarges Street flat. But I was in no doubt that Beth's fingerprints would be on it.

Although our prisoner was still under caution, I got Kate to repeat it once the tape recorder was switched on. You can't be too careful. Beth refused the services of a solicitor, but perhaps, like Faye Horton, she too was confident enough to believe she didn't need one.

‘When you were told that Faye Horton had been arrested, you said that she wanted money. What did you mean by that?'

‘After I arrived here in the UK, I telephoned the Hortons' house at Pinner, and spoke to some foreign woman. I already had the phone number, you see. Greg often phoned his father.'

That was news; Horton had said that he'd had nothing to do with his son since he went to Australia. But there seemed to be no reason for his having said that.

‘Yes, go on.'

‘She was called Katya, I think. Anyway, she put Faye on the line. I explained that I was over here to sort out Greg's will.'

That didn't ring true. Probate for Greg's last will and testament would be dealt with in Australia, but then only if Diana's will had been proved in this country. I sensed that we were about to hear a fanciful tale.

‘You knew that Greg was dead, then.'

‘Yes. He died of a heart attack last month.'

‘You mean July?'

‘Yes. That was last month, wasn't it?' replied Beth caustically.

That certainly accorded with what Steve Granger had told me, except that the heart attack had been brought about by a humane killer. But Beth had omitted to mention that, even though Kate had told her that she was being arrested for his murder.

‘Where is he buried?' I asked.

‘He was cremated, and his ashes were spread in Tamorah. It's a place not far from Darwin,' said Beth, continuing with the fiction.

At least that tallied, in a manner of speaking, but she'd probably hoped that the dingoes had left no trace of him. ‘And what did Faye Horton have to say when you phoned her?'

‘She asked why Greg's father hadn't been told about his death, and I said that I thought he had. Anyway, she asked to meet me in London to discuss the matter. So, a couple of days later, we met at the Ritz in Piccadilly for afternoon tea. Very bloody genteel, that was. Well, I hadn't even started my first cup of Earl Grey when she accused me of murdering Greg for his money. Of course, I denied it, but she said that she'd got friends in high places – that was her exact phrase – and that one phone call would tell her whether I was telling the truth.'

‘What did you say to that?'

‘I sussed out straight away what she was after, so I asked her how much she wanted.'

‘And what was her reply to that?' I asked.

‘She said that she'd say nothing if I split the inheritance with her, straight down the middle.'

‘And you agreed?'

‘What option did I have? Then she asked how much was at stake, and when I told her that it was about thirty million dollars Australian, her bloody eyes lit up, I can tell you. I reckon she could see the dollar signs coming up in her personal bank account already.'

‘I imagine so,' said Kate quietly. ‘Enough to make anyone's eyes water. So, what was to be her part of the bargain, mate?'

Beth Horton stared at Kate for some seconds before replying. Kate was very good at disguising her Australian accent, and it was only at that point that Beth realized that Kate was a fellow countrywoman. It seemed to disconcert her. ‘She said she'd help me as much as she could to get away. But she said that as soon as I'd handed over the cash, I was to get straight on the next bloody flight back to Aussie, and that she didn't want to hear from me ever again. She promised she'd keep shtum, she said, but if I didn't pay up, she'd inform the authorities.'

There was little point in questioning Beth Horton any further. She'd as good as confessed to the murder of her husband, despite her pathetic denials. That Faye Horton had challenged her about it, and threatened to expose her to the police was sufficient. It was blatantly obvious to me that Beth wouldn't have agreed to pay up unless she'd been guilty of Greg's murder. I hoped that an Australian jury would see it in the same way. If they ever got the chance. But that would depend on the result of her trial for Metcalfe's murder, provided we got that far. The truth of the matter was that if she were innocent of Greg's murder she'd've gone to the police and alleged that Faye was attempting to blackmail her.

But there was one other thing that I hadn't thought of, but Kate Ebdon did. She produced the letter that she'd seized from Makepeace, and placed it on the table.

Beth picked it up, glanced at it and smiled. ‘I wrote that,' she said.

‘But it's all fiction,' said Kate.

‘Not quite. All right, most of it's made up, but the important bit was in the PS about Marlene giving birth to a twelve pound seven ounce boy.'

‘What's significant about that? This Marlene woman doesn't exist. The Northern Territory police checked it out for us.'

‘Of course she didn't.' Beth laughed at Kate's apparent naiveté. ‘It was code. The weight of the baby was actually a date: the twelfth of July. That was to let Bruce know when Greg had died.'

‘There was only one problem,' said Kate. ‘Bruce didn't get it. I did.'

I was amazed by Beth Horton's candour. She obviously didn't realize that the Australian court that would eventually try her for Greg's murder was a court of record. As such, it had the power to demand my attendance to give evidence of the damning admissions she'd made during the course of this interview. Not that that would please the commander, unless he could persuade the Australian authorities to foot the bill for my travel and hotel expenses.

But we'd finished with Beth Horton for the time being. As far as Metcalfe's murder was concerned, we'd have to await the result of the examination of the humane killer that had been found in Beth's apartment. It didn't matter, though; she wasn't going anywhere.

On Monday morning, Beth Horton appeared before the City of Westminster magistrates. It was the first step in the tortuous process that would lead to her eventual extradition as a fugitive offender.

In a loud outburst from the dock, Elizabeth Horton protested her innocence. But the paperwork had arrived from the Australian High Commission over the weekend, and it was a matter of routine for the senior district judge to order the Australian woman's remand in custody pending any appeal she might wish to make.

I applied to have her detained at Charing Cross police station in order that we could interview her regarding another serious matter. The district judge gave us twenty-four hours, with the proviso that we could apply for an extension should we require it.

Fortunately, the report regarding the humane killer was waiting for me at Curtis Green when I got back from court. The DNA found on the weapon was that of Bruce Metcalfe, and Beth's fingerprints had been found on it, and at Talleyrand Street. Gotcha! Kate and I went straight to Charing Cross police station.

I wasted no time in putting the evidence before Beth Horton, having once more cautioned her.

‘Mrs Horton, I have here a report from the Metropolitan Forensic Science Laboratory. They have examined the humane killer found in your apartment. It had your fingerprints on it, and it carried the DNA of Bruce Metcalfe who was found murdered in his bed-sitting room at fifty-four Talleyrand Street, Earls Court on the fourteenth of this month.'