All Quiet on Arrival (28 page)

‘You were right, Harry,' said Steve Granger, who had been sitting in on the sentencing hearing at his high commissioner's behest. ‘It looks as though we'll have to wait to get her back.'

‘Don't hold your breath, sir,' said Dave to Granger. ‘O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!' he added.

‘Who said that?' I asked.

‘I did, guv,' said Dave.

‘But Sir Walter Scott wrote it,' said Granger.

‘Two of you,' I muttered. ‘That's all I need.'

Shortly after Beth Horton had been sentenced, an arrangement was arrived at between the British and Australian governments to allow Beth Horton to serve the balance of her sentence in her own country. On arrival, she was tried for the murder of her husband, and found guilty. She was sentenced to twenty-five years, to run concurrent with the sentence imposed at the Old Bailey.

But she never laid hands on the eighteen million pounds. The law, both here and down under, does not allow a murderess to profit by her crimes.

‘I reckon it'll be forfeit to the Australian government, Harry,' said Steve Granger, when we met for a drink a few days later. ‘All thirty million dollars of it.'

‘That'll make the Hortons' day for them,' commented Dave.

A week later we were back at the Old Bailey for the trial of Faye Horton. By some bizarre coincidence it was in the same court thirteen that had seen Beth Horton tried, and before the same judge.

Faye had surrendered to bail earlier that morning, and appeared in the dock soberly dressed in a navy blue jacket and skirt. She wore a plain white, high-necked blouse, but had decided against wearing any jewellery. I found it significant that her husband was not in court.

Faye pleaded not guilty to the single indictment of assisting an offender, and the trial began.

Prosecuting counsel led me through my evidence in great detail, and inevitably Faye's barrister decided that he would cross-examine me.

‘Mr Brock,' said the silk, rising to his feet with a contrived expression of perplexity on his face. ‘Do you not think that my client should have been offered the services of a solicitor during your interrogation of her?' It was a blatant attempt to render my evidence inadmissible.

But before I had a chance to reply, the judge interrupted. ‘I'm sure that in your brief you have a transcript of the recording made during that interrogation,' he said to Faye's counsel. ‘Unless it differs from mine, it is apparent that Detective Chief Inspector Brock told Mrs Horton that she was entitled to the services of a legal advisor, but she refused.'

‘Ah, quite so, My Lord,' said counsel. ‘I do apologize. I'd confused that with another interview.'
Like hell, he had.
He turned back to me. ‘Let me now turn to the interview you conducted with Mrs Horton in her husband's study on the evening of Friday the twenty-third of August, Inspector. Do I have the date right?'

‘Yes, sir,' I said. ‘You have the date right, but you have my rank wrong. I'm a
chief
inspector.'

‘Ah, quite so. My apologies.' That momentarily derailed counsel, and he consulted his brief again. ‘Yes, Chief Inspector, I understand that a solicitor friend of the Hortons – Mr Maurice Horton's own solicitor, in fact – was in the house at the time. Is that so?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Do you not think that she should have been given the opportunity of consulting him before you began questioning her?'

‘No, sir, I don't.'

‘Oh? And why not?' Counsel shot an appealing glance at the jury.

‘Mrs Horton was not under arrest at that time, and I didn't make the decision to arrest her until later. I was not, therefore, obliged to offer her the services of a solicitor. However, had she sought to have her husband's solicitor present, I would have raised no objection.'

‘Ah, quite so.' Faye's counsel had tried to muddy the waters, but had failed. ‘I have no further questions, My Lord.'

‘Good,' said the judge.

Defence counsel then went on to make an impassioned closing address larded with appeals for clemency. ‘Despite the fact that Elizabeth Horton was but a step-daughter-in-law,' he said, ‘the assistance that Mrs Horton afforded to her, although unlawful, was nonetheless prompted by a misplaced family loyalty, and led her to take a course of action which she now bitterly regrets.'

It was to no avail. After the judge's summing-up, the jury took less than an hour to find her guilty.

Weeks later, we were back at the Old Bailey yet again, this time to hear the sentence. The fact that she had assisted Elizabeth Horton to evade arrest for profit decided the judge that the appropriate sentence would be five years' imprisonment.

‘Of course, we now know why she did it,' said Kate Ebdon when we were on the way back to Curtis Green. ‘The Hortons hadn't got any money after all.' She laughed. ‘Amazing, isn't it? When you looked at the house she shared with her husband, and the cars, including the Lexus,' she added with a hint of envy, ‘you'd've thought they were rolling in it.'

‘It was all show, Kate,' I said. ‘They were in debt up to the hilt.'

‘Incidentally, guv,' continued Kate, ‘I ran a check on the cars that were parked outside on the night we nicked Faye. One of them went out to a Russian millionaire. I reckon that Maurice Horton was trying to tap him for an investment in one of his shaky enterprises.'

‘Yes, but Russian millionaires are like all millionaires, Kate,' I said. ‘When they've got it, they know how to hang on to it. But it's a pity that the CPS didn't bring a charge against Maurice Horton for assisting an offender. And I thought that Faye was the hard one of the two. But when it came to it, he just let her go without a backward glance.'

‘I wonder what he's going to do now that his wife's banged up.'

‘He'll divorce her, Kate,' I said, ‘and go in search of a rich widow who'll bail him out, I expect.'

But it was Dave who had the last word. ‘And to think that on the night of Diana Barton's murder, PC Watson put “All quiet on arrival” in the logbook,' he said. ‘Funny old world, isn't it?'